ST. JOHN: SABLE ISLAND. 31 
mare, unable to keep up, drops behind; she is an object of the great- 
est attraction to them, soon produces foals, and thus a nucleus of a 
new herd is formed. 
" I never saw one lying down to rest. They seem to sleep standing. 
They persistingly refuse the shelter of a stable, or the society of man, 
always moving, from him. In the roughest weather escaping from the 
stable they would put a mile or two between them and it, before they 
stopped to graze; in this respect differing widely from the semi-wild 
cattle, which besieged the barn doors with their lowing during the 
winter. * * * 
" To sum up then what we read from this narrow page in natural 
history, opened to our view, and in which my sole assumption is 
their origin from two or three individuals, we find that, left to them- 
selves, following the laws of natural selection, their descendants in 
one hundred and fifty years, have returned to the habits and manners 
of the tarpany, or only stock of wild horses now existing in the world. 
That, in regard to their form they differ in some respects from the 
tarpany, though agreeing with them in size, hairy head, and thick 
coat: but, although differing from these, they have wonderfully re- 
produced forms, of whose existence we only know from the sculptures 
of Nineveh and the friezes of the Parthenon, where we find the low 
stature contrasted by the tall rider, the abundant tail and mane either 
cropped or tied and plaited, to prevent its encuml^ering the rider, the 
hairy jowl and horizontal head, and the short and cock-thrappled 
neck, and in some figures the short croup and low tail. * * * 
" As regards colour wc find that the original stock carried with 
them the germ of all colours known from ages, not only the bays and 
browns which we consider the natural colours, but the more startling 
varieties of pure white, and piel)ald, — piebalds known from ages, on 
old China coin, ypon the ancient Thracian hills, from whose back 
Attila ravished worlds, and the mark of whose foot, it was his boast, 
that neither nature nor man could efface. We find, too, the chest- 
nuts prevailing with their extremities coloured like their bodies, their 
tails and manes growing ever lighter, and a tendency to a dark streak 
on the back and withers; lastlj', the blue greys or mouse or tans, with 
the same dark streak. Here, too, tliere is nothing new; the ancient 
Assyrian dun, and the Phrygian cerulean breeds of the time of Ho- 
mer, are all prototypes, though the latter is scarcely known among our 
domestic breeds." 
