THE HORSE AS A MOTOR 25 



might wipe out the work of years, and so could a seemingly 

 capricious reversion to an abnormal or inferior type. Never- 

 theless, the accumulated improvement of ages of natural se- 

 lection, thousands of years of selection by man, and two and a 

 half centuries of scientific breeding, has resulted in a class of 

 animal motors suitable for all farm work, great in numbers 

 and value, and understood, almost by instinct, by every farmer 

 in civilized countries. 



The earliest record of man's use of the horse occurs in the 

 Bible. Apparently the horse was domesticated in Egypt, 

 about 1740 B. C., and first used for the purposes of war. Three 

 hundred years later, horse races were among the sports at the 

 Olympian games, in Athens. Troops of wild horses in Tar- 

 tary and in South America were first used for food, and then 

 saddled. Although the prehistoric horse existed in North 

 America, the modern type in its wild state undoubtedly springs 

 from horses which were loosed by the earliest Spanish explorers. 

 History shows that the business of war and conquest have 

 done more to distribute the horse over the earth than com- 

 merce. Horses were fit chattels only for kings in the palmy 

 days of Egypt, and even as late as the tenth century, farmers 

 in England were forbidden, by law, to harness the horse to the 

 plow. The ancient Anglo-Saxon and Welsh records contain 

 no reference to the plow horse, and the first notice of his use 

 in field labor is given by a piece of tapestry, woven at Bayonne 

 in the time of William the Conqueror. Even then he was 

 attached to a light-running harrow. Now, and ever since the 

 early decades of the nineteenth century, the horse has shoul- 

 dered the burden of plowing, which fell upon the ox and the 

 ass long before the Christian Era. 



The greatest and most lasting improvement of the horse 

 came from deliberate crossing and selection. Robert Bake- 

 well, in England, rendered enduring service by his improvement 

 a the English cart horse, and founded on his work, we now 

 ohve wonderful draft breeds, each revealing a certain ideal. 



