CHAPTER V. 



PEIMITIVE STOCK OF WILD HOESES THE STEPPES. 



RE there any genuine wild horses in 

 existence that is to say, any that are not 

 descended, like those of South America, 

 from a domesticated stock ? Naturalists 

 have all concurred until very recently in 

 answering this question negatively. They were of 

 opinion that, as in the case of the sheep, the goat, and 

 some other domestic animals, not a singular indication 

 remains by which we can judge of the form, the 

 colour, or the habits, by which the horse was charac- 

 terized before it became the servant of man, or how 

 far it may have differed from the present domesticated 

 races. But this opinion is entirely gratuitous, and 

 unsupported by a single fact. They choose to assume, 

 in defiance of probability and of testimony, that the 

 herds of horses that roam over the vast unexplored 

 regions of Central Asia are not wild but feral (that 



