30 The Horse Industry in New York State 



It is accepted as a truism, however, that a long-waisted horse 

 is not a strong or enduring one — that is, long in the loins or 

 lumbar vertebrae. Some of the fossil types had seven or eight 

 lumbar vertebrae. William C'avandish, the Duke of New Castle, 

 in 1654, depicts the horse of that time with seven. This probably 

 was an accidental revision or sport, for the later fossil types 

 had the regulation six common to all modern horses except the 

 Axab which has five, or, if six are developed, only seventeen 

 dorsal vertebrae. 



This shortness of the back of the Arab sufficiently explains his 

 great weight-carrying capacity and endurance, which, with his 

 extended ribs and deep chest with big trottle and open-nostrils, 

 gives him great lung capacity. 



It is in the transmission of some of these qualities to his off- 

 spring, the Thoronghbred and Trotter, that we have the speed and 

 endurance of these types. With three centuries of artificial se- 

 lection for special functions of racing we have produced these 

 separate types of horses, but the present stock remains a distinct 

 type by itself, largely on account of the anatomical difterences. 



HEREDITY 



In the horse we have the wonderful opportunity for the study 

 of heredity, because of the anatomical difi^erences that exist be- 

 tween the Arab and even his nearest of kin, the Thoroughbred 

 and Trotter. For three hundred years we have, by special selection 

 for capacity, produced our modern types, using the dams of the 

 European horse with the sire of the Arab horse, constantly re- 

 fining and reenforcing from the Arab, until we have in the Thor- 

 oughbred 99 per cent and more of Aj-ab blood ; but with all this 

 selection I fail to find a Thoroughbred skeleton with the twenty- 

 three vertebrae of the Arab. On the other hand, we have the 

 Arab horse bred with religious care by the desert tribes, always 

 tracing their pedigrees from the dam, and for three thousand 

 years they have maintained a pure type with twenty-three verte- 

 brae. 



These facts have forced me to accept this theory until the con- 

 trary is proved true : that the dam has more control over the pro- 



