the Thorough-bred Horse. 143 



at Carthage found the Libyans using these beautiful horses, and 

 when they struck coins placed a horse or a horsehead on them as 

 the badge of Libya, and used a similar type on their coins struck 

 in Sicily, whither doubtless they carried the Libyan breed. This 

 accounts for the extraordinary fame of the horses of Etna and 

 Syracuse, and the famous steeds of Tarentum. It is now clear 

 that the Arabs never owned a good horse until they had become 

 masters of North Africa and the Barbary horses, from whom are 

 sprung our own racing stock through Lord Godolphin's Barb. 

 North Africa therefore and not Arabia or any other part of Asia 

 is the original home of the thoroughbred. 



Now though the pedigree of the cart-horse type can be traced 

 to the coarse, thickset little horses of Europe and Asia, the wild 

 ancestor of the Barb is yet to seek, for Africa has no wild horse, 

 such as tarpan or Prezevalsky's, though she has an ass and four 

 zebras, including the quagga, now extinct. Can the Barb be 

 sprung wholly or in part from a zebra ? Arab foals at birth 

 constantly have zebra markings, sometimes retained when full 

 grown, as by Prof. Ewart's filly Fatima. Strabo too notices that 

 the horses of the Libyan Garamantes have longer hoofs than any 

 other horses. Prof. Ewart's hybrids from Burchell's zebra and 

 various mares show the markings not of a Burchell's zebra, but of 

 a Somaliland zebra, from which it has been inferred that the 

 remote ancestor of both Equus caballus and Burchell's zebra 

 was striped like the Somaliland and mountain zebra. But is it 

 necessary to go back so far ? May not the Somaliland zebra 

 stripes in the hybrid be due to the circumstance that the dam 

 in each case had a certain amount of Barb blood in her, which 

 was derived from either the Somaliland zebra or a closely allied 

 species ? He (Prof. Ridgeway) had crossed a Muscovy drake with 

 a common white duck, derived from the common wild duck, with 

 the result that all the offspring are coloured and their colouring 

 resembles that of the mallard. No one would say that the 

 hybrids show a reversion to a remote common ancestor of both 

 mallard and Muscovy, for it is obvious that the colouring is simply 

 that of the white duck's immediate ancestors. Authorities like 

 Capt. Hayes have pointed out the great similarity in form between 

 Burchell's and the Somaliland zebra to a well-bred horse, i.e. a 

 horse that has Barb blood in him. He therefore suggested that 

 the Barbary horse, from which he had shown all the fine horses of 

 the world have sprung, was derived either from the zebra of 

 North-east Africa, or, as is more likely, from some very closely 

 allied species now extinct, which like Prezevalsky's horse may 

 have had castors on its hind legs like Equus caballus. 



10—2 



