234 



UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



however, that the Horse was not domesticated in Europe until the 

 Bronze Age, or at least not to any large extent. 



At the present time there do not appear to be any truly wild 

 horses of the same species as our domesticated breeds, and the 



so-called "wild 

 horses " of South 

 America, for ex- 

 ample, are simply 

 feral, i.e. the de- 

 scendants of tame 

 animals which 



have escaped from 



captivity. There is, however, a small kind of horse (Egnus 

 Przewalskii, fig. 1169) native to the desert regions of Central 

 Asia, which possibly approaches in some respects to the ancestral 



Fig. 1168. Prehistoric Hog-Maned Horses (from Isaac Taylor's The Origin 

 of the Aryans, by the courtesy of Mr. Walter Scott) 



Fig. 1169. Przewalsky's Horse (Equus Przewalskii) 



stock. The mane is not well developed, and the tail resembles 

 that of a donkey. The greatly specialized limbs of horses and 

 their allies have undoubtedly been evolved as an adaptation to 

 swift progression on plains of desert or steppe nature (see vol. iii, 



