MARKINGS 25 



PART V. THE MARKINGS OF THE HORSE. 



Darwin wrote of the probable " descent of 

 all existing races from a single dun-coloured, 

 more or less striped primitive stock to Which 

 our horses occasionally revert." 



The stories of the Great Ice Age and of 

 Bering Land have shown us a variety of 

 swiftly changing climates in which the original 

 three-toed dun striped ancestors begat a special 

 type of horse for each kind of habitat. The 

 high lands and high latitudes, the low lands 

 and low latitudes, the tall grasses, the short 

 grasses, the open woodlands, the northern 

 downs and valleys, bred each their special type 

 of the wild horse. 



Evidence of the Wind. It is not so very 

 long since the last clumps of timber vanished 

 from the steppes. Still on the North Ameri- 

 can range one finds the trunks and roots of 

 forest trees, which silicate swamps have changed 

 into masses of jaspar onyx and chalcedony ; 

 and these have not had time to sink as stones 

 do into the soil. In a seven hundred mile ride 

 across the Canadian plains, I found a living 

 clump of three pines distant a hundred-and- 

 fifty miles from the edge of the shrunken forest. 

 Such shelters have indeed so lately disappeared 

 that the horse has not yet learned the trick of 



