176 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
‘tail—a horse, in fact, almost identical with the above-mentioned tarpan. But long before 
historic records begin these horses must have been domesticated; man discovered that they 
could be even more useful alive than dead, and from that time forth the horse became his 
inseparable companion. ‘Czsar found the Ancient Britons and Germans using war-chariots 
drawn by herses.” 
But the stock of domestic horses drawn from this tarpan breed appears to have died 
out almost entirely, the majority of horses now existing being probably descendants of the 
native wild horses of Asia, the product of a still earlier domestication. In Egypt the horse, 
as a domestic animal, seems to have been preceded by the ass; but about 1900 B.C. it 
begins to appear in the rdéle of a war-horse, to draw chariots. Its use, indeed, until the 
Middle Ages was almost universally as a war-horse. 
From the time of its domestication till to-day the history of the horse has been one 
of progress. The care and forethought of the breeder have produced many varieties, resulting 
in such extremes as the London Dray-horse, the Racer, and the Shetland Pony. 
The coloration of our various breeds of horses is generally without any definite marking,, 
piebald and dappled being the nearest approach to a pattern. Occasionally, however, horses are 
found with a dark 
stripe along the back, 
and sometimes with 
dark stripes on the 
shoulders and legs. . 
Darwin, discovering 
a number of horses so 
marked belonging to 
different breeds, came 
to the conclusion that 
probably all existing 
races of horses were 
descended from a 
“single dun-coloured, 
more or less striped 
2. : ' primitive stock, to 
Photo by T. Fall which [stock] our 
YEARLING ARAB COLTS horses occasionally 
Note the colts examining the photographer's bag. They are very inquisitive creatures, but easily frightened revert.” 
“Tf we were not 
so habituated to the sight of the horse,” says the late Sir William Flower, “as hardly ever 
to consider its structure, we should greatly marvel at being told of a mammal so strangely 
constructed that it had but a single toe on each extremity, on the end of the nail of 
which it walked or galloped. Such a conformation is without parallel in the vertebrate series.” 
By the aid of fossils we can trace out all the stages through which this wonderful foot has 
passed in arriving at its present state of perfection: we can see how it has become more 
and more beautifully adapted to fulfil the requirement demanded —a firm support to enable 
its owner to cover hard ground at great speed. The study of the structure of this foot, and a 
comparison with the intermediate forms, make it clear that this toe corresponds to the third 
finger or toe of the human hand or foot — according as we compare the fore or hind limbs — 
and that its development was at the expense of the remaining toes, which gradually dwindled 
and disappeared, leaving in the living one-toed horse only traces of the second and fourth toes 
in the shape of a pair of splint-bones, one on either side of the excessively developed third toe. 
The horses, it must be remarked, may be distinguished from the asses by the fact that the 
tail in the former is clothed with long hair throughout; in the latter long hair springs only 
from the sides and end, forming a tuft. Furthermore, the horses have a remarkable horny 
