THE HORSE. 73 



impressions gathered from a civilised environ- 

 ment than if we confine our attention to adults. 

 It will be found that all truly innate instincts, 

 without exception, are of enormous antiquity, and 

 that they date back to an era long antecedent to 

 the time when man began to tame and make use 

 of any of the lower animals. We know that the 

 horse's wild forefathers, like the free mustangs 

 and wild steeds of the Asian steppes, inhabited 

 open plains and trusted chiefly to their speed in 

 escaping from their enemies. This at once be- 

 comes evident when we examine a young foal, 

 which in outward shape as well as in mental 

 attributes tends to resemble the earlier types 

 from which the modern representatives of the 

 race have sprung. The legs of a colt are enor- 

 mously developed from birth. He looks absurdly 

 like a horse on stilts, and when four or five days 

 old he can gallop almost as fast as ever he will 

 in his life. He holds his head up boldly, and 

 never tries to slink away and hide like a young 

 calf or fawn, whose ancestors dwelt in the forest. 

 There is a story that a thoroughbred foal of about 

 a month old once beat a trained race-horse over a 

 half-mile course, and thereby won his owner a hand- 

 some sum which had been wagered against him. 



