52 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



of field. In the first place there is or was an extensive supply of 

 the specimens for examination ; in the second, the side of a horse's 

 neck is a region where no extraneous or artificial agents, such as 

 harness, except a bridle, can operate, and therefore Nature and 

 the animal's habits have free play ; in the third the neck of a horse 

 in its locomotive life is subject to powerful mechanical forces which 

 are constant, literally speaking, while it walks, trots, canters or 

 gallops. Here then, if anywhere, one may read the records, in 

 indelible characters of hair patterns, the history of its active life 

 and that of its ancestors, and here also one may reasonably expect 

 to find these patterns in every possible stage of formation, from a 

 mere rudiment to the most finished product in a whorl, feathering 

 and crest — and this is precisely what is found to exist. 



Even an observer not acquainted with the anatomy of this 

 region who watches closely a horse in action cannot fail to notice 

 how at every step taken there is a marked jolt of the neck produced 

 in the neck by the impact of its hoofs with the ground and in support- 

 ing its heavy skull. I have computed several times the number of 

 jolts that the neck of a trotting horse sustains, in my numerous 

 rides behind various horses, during many hundreds of miles, and 

 have reckoned the number which occur in a horse trotting for an 

 hour, at the usual rate at which a doctor travels. This is on the 

 average 6,000, and of course the numbers of jolts in walking, canter- 

 ing, and galloping vary according to these different paces. But a 

 great deal more of movement of the head and neck is observed 

 beside the jolt at every step. See how the animal tosses up its 

 head, twists it to this and that side for the mere joie de vivre when 

 it is fresh, or, even when hindered by blinkers, 1 how he turns his 

 head to look at every passing object in the road with his ancestral 

 caution, how he will pass contemptuously a great horse-waggon 

 or even now a villainous-looking motor lorry, but will peer at a 

 beggar woman sitting beside the road, or a heap of stones, or a 

 yapping cur ! All this vivid muscular work of a horse's head and 

 neck hardly ceases while he is in action and at any rate not till he 

 is dead beat, and the higher the courage and breeding of the horse 

 the more frequent and brisk are his movements. Is it possible 

 to conceive a region of the body of any large mammal where more 

 numerous, varied, and powerful action of underlying muscles can 



1 Blinkers ought long ago to have gone the way of bearing-reins for 

 draught horses. If a riding horse does not need them, no more need a draught 

 horse be thus insulted, for very little intelligence and patience on the part 

 of their drivers would have educated their excellent brains into indifference 

 towards startling objects. 



