no THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



scarcely reaching an average height of 12.1. These 

 ponies are, however, very strong and hardy. 



It may be added that the nomad Mongols 

 devote great attention to breeding ponies, of which 

 they possess an immense number, although many 

 of them are spoilt by having their hoofs and teeth 

 abnormally worn down by the stony nature of 

 the ground and the hard herbage on which they 

 feed. 



Ponies more or less nearly related to the Mon- 

 golian are to be found throughout the vast tracts 

 of Central Asia lying between Siberia and the 

 Himalaya, since, in the opinion of Captain Hayes, 1 

 the ponies of Bhutan, Nepal, Spiti, and Yarkand 

 are of the same general type ; Yarkandis being 

 not infrequently dun. The ponies of Corea, as 

 already mentioned, are closely allied to those of 

 Mongolia, and come equally close in general 

 characters to the wild tarpan. 



Here it may be well to mention that there 

 is no near resemblance between Mongolian ponies 

 and the eel-backed dun horses of Norway, such 

 as might be supposed to occur in breeds derived 

 from the same ancestral stock. A moment's reflec- 

 tion will, however, show that in this particular case 

 no such resemblance is to be expected ; for if the 

 wild horse was domesticated in regions so far apart 

 from one another as Mongolia and Norway, it 



1 The Points of the Horse, London, 3rd ed., p. 599. 



