558 
THE SAVAGE WORLD. 
functions, the tarpan must have the spirit of the horse united to the donkey’s 
patient endurance, hardiness and capability of making a hasty, but sufficient, 
meal off of anything that can be digested by anything less omnivorous than 
a shark. That the tarpan can answer all these expectations would seem to 
suggest that his degree of evolution must have had reference to the functions 
which he was to be called upon to discharge. Though in case of need the 
Cossack not merely “ lives upon his horse,” but subsists upon him, he will under 
other circumstances treat him with the care and kindness which so useful a 
creature deserves, and which results in a mutual affection such as is familiar 
WILD ASSES OF THIBET. 
to us in the case of the Arab of the desert. Who has not responded to Caroline 
Norton’s poetical account of the Arab and his steed? 
“My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by, 
With thy proudly arched and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye ! 
’wet not to roam the desert now with all thy winged speed, 
may not mount on thee again, thou’rt sold my Arab steed! 
vl/ sl» 4* 
'T* *V* 'T* 'v* *v* 
Will they ill-use thee? If I thought—but no, it cannot be, 
Thou art so swift, yet easy curbed ; so gentle, yet so free.” 
Such, too, is the feeling of the Cossack, and the need for “Humane Societies” 
among more highly civilized men would seem to lend point to the cynicism 
which defined gratitude as a lively sense of favors yet to be received. Doubtless 
the Cossack is an inferior man, and the tarpan but a sorry specimen of the 
horse, and yet each teaches a lesson which might lead one to conclude that 
possibly religious superstition is not in all respects so harmful as “enlightened 
skepticism and agnosticism.” The tarpan is considered by the latest authorities 
not the ancestral horse, but the descendant of domesticated animals which has 
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