44 FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



ACCLIMATISATION. 



The effects of acclimatisation (the process of inuring an 

 animal to a foreign climate) may be divided into (i) those 

 produced on the emigrant, and (2) those made manifest in its 

 descendants ; the latter changes being much better marked 

 than the former. Whether the new climate be bad or good, 

 its influence on the progeny of imported stock tends to 

 render them like unto the type peculiar to the adopted 

 country. Thus, the English-bred offspring of Arabs lose, even 

 in the first generation, a large portion of the characteristics 

 which distinguish the sons and daughters of the Desert ; and 

 in India, English blood quickly assumes a " country-bred " 

 appearance. The effects of soil and climate in developing 

 special equine types may be easily seen by comparing even 

 Irish with English horses, or Shires bred in Norfolk with those 

 produced in the Midlands, to say nothing of comparisons 

 made between Australians and Arabs, for instance. Horses 

 and their progeny support in an admirable manner a change 

 from a hot or temperate climate to a cold one, such as that 

 from Arabia to Russia, where the Arab Smetanka, imported in 

 1775 and united with Danish, Dutch and English mares, was 

 the founder of the famous breed of Orlof trotters. The hardy 

 and well-shaped remounts which are bred in the bitterly cold 

 steppes of the Don and Volga, are to a large extent Anglo- 

 Arabs. Many of the excellent saddle horses of Montana 

 are pure or nearly pure English. A change from a cold or 

 temperate climate to a very hot one is, on the contrary, badly 

 borne, at least by the descendants, and especially if the new 

 climate is damp as well as tropical. The heat of Queensland, 

 where good horses are bred, might be taken as the maximum 

 for successful breeding. In a climate as hot as India, it is 

 impossible to continue to breed good stock, without frequent 

 importations of fresh blood, and even then it is impossible to 



