CHAPTER XXXIII 



THE PREHISTORIC FARMYARD 



THE collection at the Zoo of all the equine animals 

 now found on the globe, gives ample scope for 

 conjecture as to how the horse as we know it was 

 developed from this material. Perhaps it was not 

 developed from them at all, but from a more 

 horse-like animal than any of them, which has 

 disappeared from wild life, even as the original 

 wild ox has disappeared from the forests of the 

 West. But a survey of all domestic forms only 

 strengthens the impression that the original tribes 

 first drew them from the wild species with which 

 they were in contact. It is still done by the Lapps 

 and the jungle tribes of Assam, and the process as it 

 goes on to-day affords scope for conjectures as to 

 what the ''prehistoric farm" must have looked like. 



Probably the farmyard of one of these early com- 

 munities did not contain many varieties of stock ; 

 neither would the judges of an agricultural show have 

 had many " classes " to deal with. It is the very 

 natural tendency of early efforts at domestication in 

 any form to be limited to the reclamation of a single 

 species. This in itself is difficult enough. The 

 ambition to possess a variety of domestic animals 



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