PEODUCED BY MAN. 819 



from this that no wild stock could be held to exist on that area. 

 Still though we may follow the highly trustworthy naturalists 

 and travellers just mentioned as to the persistence of the aboriginal 

 horse in a wild state on the Turanian steppes, we have yet to 

 show that it is probable that it was on those steppes rather than 

 in any other part of the wide area over which the true wild horse 

 once ranged that it became reduced to domestication. And here 

 again the Accadian inscriptions come to our assistance ; the horse 

 being called there (see the Rev. William Houghton, 1. c, 1876, 

 p. 3) ' imiru Kur-ra,' ' the animal from the East.' We see from 

 this that these ancient Turanians claimed, and had their claim 

 acknowledged, that the taming of the horse was an achievement 

 wrought out in the cradle of their race. I have sometimes 

 thought that the ascription by the Greeks of this feat to Poseidon 

 may be similarly taken to indicate that they had some sort of dim 

 conviction that the horse had come to them from the countries 

 beyond the Egean. This, however, may be an overstraining of the 

 value of such hints. But the history of the horse, whether dug out 

 of Pile-dwellings and Neolithic interments, or out of records such as 

 those in Genesis and Exodus, show that it came comparatively late 

 into use, as a domestic animal at least, in the regions to the west of 

 the Central Asiatic plains ^. 



The fourth of the domesticated animals, which I have spoken 

 of as having in great probability had a Central Asiatic origin, the 

 goat, namely, has its claims, supported by the vast majority of 

 naturalists without any hesitation. The wild Ca]pra aegagrus of 

 the Taurus, of the Caucasus, of the Persian mountains, and of 

 Kirghiz and Tatar districts, * possibly mingled,' says Mr. Darwin, 

 « Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants,' i. p. 105, ' with 

 the allied Indian species, Capra Falconeri' may be safely taken as 

 the parent-stock of this animal. The Tibetan and Angoran varieties 

 of the goat, by their well-deserved reputation, may seem, even in 

 these days and under the light thrown on the subject by the book 

 just quoted, to lend some support to Col. Hamilton Smith's prin- 

 ciple 2, that where the largest and most energetic breeds of a race 

 exist, there we may look for their original habitation. 



1 See further, Lenormant, 'Premieres Civilisations,' torn. i. p. 322 5 Ahlquist, ' Die 

 Kulturworter der Westfinnischen Sprachen,' 1878, p. 9; 'Spectator/ April 27, 1878, 

 ibique a me citata. 



2 These are Col. Hamilton Smith's views (Nat. Library, * Dogs/ vol. ii. p. 163, cit. 



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