118 
The Ecolution of the Horse. 
is the more remarkable as, when introduced from Europe, the 
horses that ran wild proved by their rapid multiplication in the 
plains of South America and Texas that the climate, food, and 
other circumstances were highly favourable for their existence. 
The former great abundance of horses in America, their com- 
plete extinction, and their perfect acclimatisation when re-intro- 
duced by man, form curious, but as yet unsolved, problems in 
the geographical distribution 01 animals. 
In Europe, wild horses were extremely abundant in the 
Polished Stone period, before the anuals of our present historical 
age commenced. Judging by the quantity of their remains 
found associated with those of the Man of that time, the chase 
of these animals must have been among his chief occupations, 
and they must have served him with one of his most impor- 
tant food-supplies. The chai-acter of the bones preserved, and 
certain rude but graphic representations carved on bones or 
reindeer's antlers found in caves in the South of France, enable 
us to know that they were rather small in size and heavy in 
build, with large heads and rough, shaggy manes and tails — 
much like, in fact, the present wild horses of the steppes of 
Russia. These horses were domesticated by the inhabitants of 
Europe before the dawn of history ; but it is doubtful whether 
the majority of the horses now existing on the Continent are 
derived from them, as it is more probable that they are the 
descendants of horses imported, through Greece and Italy, from 
Asia, derived from a still earlier domestication, followed by gra- 
dual improvement through long-continued attention bestowed on 
their breeding and training. Horses are now diffused, through 
the agency of man, throughout almost the whole of the inhabited 
part of the globe, and the great modifications they have under- 
gone in consequence of domestication and selective breeding are 
well known to all. In Australia, as in America, horses imported 
by the European settlers have escaped into the unreplaimed 
lands, and multiplied to a prodigious extent, roaming in vast 
herds over the plains where no hoofed animal ever trod before. 
(2.) The domestic ass (Equus asintts) is nearly as widely 
diffused and useful to man as the horse. It was known in 
Egypt long before the horse, and is probably of African origin, 
as it has lately been found in a wild state in the highlands of 
Abyssinia. 
(3.) The Asiatic wild ass (Equus hcmionus), which roams 
in small herds in the open plains of Syria, of many parts of 
Persia, and of the north-west of India, and in the highlands 
of Tartary and Tibet, from the shores of the Caspian to the 
frontiers of China, differs from the last in being of a redder or 
