TELEfJONY AND REVERSION. 101 



our breeds of horses — Arabs, Exmoors, Clydesdales, &c. — 

 descended from striped ancestors, from hog-maued an- 

 cestors, elaborately decorated with bands on the face, 

 neck, body, and legs, after the fashion of one or other of 

 the "gaily painted zebras?" Evidently it is desirable to 

 consider this question before dealing with the reversion 

 hypothesis. 



What evidence is there in favour of the view so generally 

 held that the ancestors ol: the horse were striped ? Over 

 four thousand separate books have been published on 

 subjects appertaining to the horse, and though many of 

 these works devote a chapter to the horse of antiquity, I 

 believe I am right in saying that they afford no evidence 

 of a horse striped after the manner of a zebra or quagga 

 having existed during the historic period. What of the 

 prehistoric period ? Every one knows that the palaeolithic 

 cave-dwellers, instead of devoting much time to polishing 

 their implements, after the fashion of their neolithic suc- 

 cessors, spent some of their leisure in delineating on bone, 

 slate, and other permanent materials the beasts of the chase 

 — amongst others the mammoth, reindeer, and horse. Now 

 although these palseolithic men lived many thousands of 

 years ago, they were evidently accurate observers. A sketch, 

 e. g., of a reindeer iight on a piece of slate is most spirited, 

 while that of a mammoth on a piece of ivory (found in the 

 Madelaine cave) is strikingly accurate. But what of the 

 horses ? That the Troglodyte artist was abundantly familiar 

 with the horse will be evident when I mention that near 

 Solutre, in the neighbourhood of Macon, to the north of 

 Lyons, there are the remains of thousands of horses which 

 had undoubtedly served as food during a considerable period 

 for a fairly large settlement of primeval men. The bones 

 of the horse are mingled with — to mention only ungulates 

 — those of the mammoth, Canadian deer, primeval ox, and 

 the saiga-antelope. The majority of the bones are broken, 

 the long ones having been split for the sake of the marrow. 

 Do any of the sketches, made it may be thirty thousand 

 years ago, throw any light on the striping of the horse? 



