ST. JOHN: SABLE ISLAND. 31 



mare, unable to keep up, drops behind; she is an object of the great- 

 est attraction to them, soon produces foals, and thus a nucleus of a 

 new herd is formed. 



" I never saw one lying down to rest. They seem to sleep standing. 

 They persistingly refuse the shelter of a stable, or the society of man, 

 always moving from him. In the roughest weather escaping from the 

 stable they would put a mile or two between them and it, before they 

 stopped to graze; in this respect differing widely from the semi-wild 

 cattle, which besieged the barn doors with their lowing during the 

 winter. * * * 



" To sum up then what we read from this narrow page in natural 

 history, opened to our view, and in which my sole assumption is 

 their origin from two or three individuals, we find that, left to them- 

 selves, following the laws of natural selection, their descendants in 

 one hundred and fifty years, have returned to the habits and manners 

 of the tarpany, or only stock of wild horses now existing in the world. 

 That, in regard to their form they differ in some respects from the 

 tarpany, though agreeing with them in size, hairy head, and thick 

 coat: but, although differing from these, they have wonderfully re- 

 produced forms, of whose existence we only know from the sculptures 

 of Nineveh and the friezes of the Parthenon, where we find the low 

 stature contrasted by the tall rider, the abundant tail and mane either 

 cropped or tied and plaited, to prevent its encumbering the rider, the 

 hairy jowl and horizontal head, and the short and cock-thrappled 

 neck, and in some figures the short croup and low tail. * 



"As regards colour we find that the original stock carried with 

 them the germ of all colours known from ages, not only the bays and 

 browns which we consider the natural colours, but the more startling 

 varieties of pure white, and piebald, piebalds known from ages, on 

 old China coin, upon the ancient Thracian hills, from whose back 

 Attila ravished worlds, and the mark of whose foot, it was his boast, 

 that neither nature nor man could efface. We find, too, the chest- 

 nuts prevailing with their extremities coloured like their bodies, their 

 tails and manes growing ever lighter, and a tendency to a dark streak 

 on the back and withers; lastly, the blue greys or mouse or tans, with 

 the same dark streak. Here, too, there is nothing new; the ancient 

 Assyrian dun, and the Phrygian cerulean breeds of the time of Ho- 

 mer, are all prototypes, though the latter is scarcely known among our 

 domestic breeds." 



