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MODERN HORSES AND THEIR ANCESTORS

The ever-increasing development of motor traffic leads to speculation as to what is to be in the immediate future the fate of the horse. What is its history in the past?

It is in nearly all cases a matter of great difficulty to trace the animals and plants which mankind has domesticated or cultivated to the original wild stock from which they have been derived. Lately we have gained new knowledge on the origin of the domesticated breeds of the horse. It is generally agreed that the Mongolian wild horse represents the chief stock from which the horses of Europe and those conveyed by Europeans to America were derived. This wild horse was formerly known as inhabiting the Kirghiz steppes, and was called the Tarpan. It became extinct there some seventy years ago. The natives of that district asserted that the pure breed was only to be met with farther East in the Gobi Desert of Central Asia. The Tarpan itself showed signs of mixed blood in having a mouse-coloured coat, which is a sure indication amongst horses of cross-breeding. Prevalsky, a Russian traveller, was the first to obtain specimens of the pure-bred wild horse of the Gobi Desert, which still exists. Live specimens have been brought to Europe, and some are in the possession of the Duke of Bedford. A female is mounted and exhibited in the Natural History Museum, and also a skeleton and skulls. Prevalsky’s horse, or the Mongolian wild horse, is of small stature, standing about twelve hands at the shoulder. The root of the tail is short-haired, the mane short and upright, without forelock. The body colour is yellow dun, the mane and tail black, as well as the lower part of the legs, and there is a dark stripe down the back. The muzzle in pure-bred specimens is white. The head is relatively large and the muzzle thick and relatively short. A very decided character is shown by the great size and relative length of the row of cheek-teeth, it being one-third larger than the same row of teeth in a Dartmoor pony of the same stature.

A very interesting fact, which goes a long way to establish the view that the European domesticated horse is derived from the Mongolian wild horse, comes to us in a most striking way from some of the most ancient records of the human race. In the South of France the contents of caves formerly inhabited by men have been dug out and examined with increasing care and accuracy of late years, though first investigated fifty years ago. Similar caves, though not so prolific of evidences of human occupation, have been explored in England (Kent’s Cavern at Torquay, and others). The astounding fact has now become quite clear that these caves were inhabited by men of no mean capacity from 50,000 to 250,000 years ago, when bone harpoons, flint knives, flint scrapers, and bone javelin-throwers were the chief weapons in use, when these islands were solidly joined to the European continent, when a sheet of glacial ice, alternately retreating and extending, covered the whole of Northern Europe, and when the mammoth, rhinoceros, hyena, lion, bear, bison, great ox, horse, and later the reindeer, inhabited the land and were hunted, eaten, and utilised for their bone, tusks, and skin by these ancient men. I revert to this subject in a later article (page 371), but would merely say now that it is all as certain and well-established a chapter in man’s history as that of the ancient Egyptians, who are really quite modern (dating from 8000 years at most) as compared with these cave-men of 50,000 years ago, and the even earlier races which preceded them in Europe.

The bones of the animals killed and eaten by the cave-men are found in some cases in enormous quantities. In one locality in France the bones of as many as 80,000 horses (which had been cooked and eaten) have been dug up and counted! The most wonderful and extraordinary thing about these cave-men is that they carved complete rounded sculptures, high reliefs, low reliefs, and line-engravings on mammoth’s ivory, on reindeer horn, on bones, and on stones—the line-engravings being the latest in date, as shown by their position in the deposits on the floor of the caves, which are often as much as twenty feet or thirty feet in thickness! Not only that, but these carvings are often real works of art, extremely well drawn, and showing not mere childish effort but work which was done with the intention and control of an artist’s mind.

An immense number of these carvings are now known. I have before me one of the most recent publications on the subject—a series of plates showing the carvings collected from caves in the Pyrenees, the Dordogne, and the Landes by M. Piette, who recently died. I have examined his collection and others of the same kind in the great Museum of St. Germain, near Paris. We have in London some of the earlier collections, and especially that of the Vicomte de Lastic, to purchase which my old friend Sir Richard Owen journeyed to the Dordogne in the winter of 1864. Many animals, as well as some human beings (Fig. 7), are represented in these carvings—the mammoth itself, carved on a piece of its own ivory, is among them, and a good many represent the horse (Fig. 8). Now it is a fact that the carvings of the horses of that period undoubtedly represent a horse which is identical in proportions, shape of head, mane, and tail, with the wild Mongolian horse, and is unlike in those points to modern European horses, or to the Arabian horse.

It was, until the discoveries of M. Piette, held that though the cave-men killed, ate, and made pictures of the horse of those remote days, yet that they did not tame it, put a halter or a bridle on it, and make use of it. Some of the carvings figured by M. Piette leave, however, no room for doubt that the cave-men fitted a bridle to the head and muzzle of the horse. These carvings (Fig. 9) show a twisted thong placed round the nose and passing near the angle of the mouth where it is possible, though not certain, that a “bit” was inserted. Connected to this main encircling thong are four twisted cords (on each side of the head), which run horizontally backwards, and the two lower of these are joined by a flat, plate-like piece, which is ornamented. The whole apparatus is further connected to a twisted cord on each side, which runs towards the back of the head, but it is not shown in the carving what becomes of it. Thus it seems clear not only that the cave-men of these remote ages were wonderful artists, but that they mastered and muzzled the horse.

Some of the engravings of horses’ heads seem to indicate the existence of a horse alongside the commoner form with a narrower, more tapering face, and may possibly be due to the introduction, even at that remote period, of another race distinct from the Northern or Mongolian wild horse. That this admixture of a distinct and more slender horse with the Northern horse has taken place over and over again in historical times is a matter of knowledge. The question is, when did it first take place, and where did the more slender horse come from? In later days we know this more shapely breed as the Arab and the Barb, and the introduction of its blood at various times into the more Northern stock is well ascertained. The latest great historical case of such admixture is the production of the English thoroughbred in the eighteenth century by such sires as the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Barb, and the Brierley Turk, whose blood is transmitted to modern racehorses through the great historic sires, Herod, Matchem, and Eclipse, the ancestors of practically all modern racehorses.

The horse of more Southern origin thus recognised as distinct from the prehistoric European horse, it is now convenient to speak of as the Southern or Arabian horse. There are certain curious structural features which seem to mark these horses and their offspring, even when their strain is blended with that of the more Northern horse. Probably from the time of the cave-men onward the selective breeding of horses has been carried on, so that in many breeds size has been vastly increased. It is an important fact that the English racehorse has never been selected and bred for “points” (as cattle and sheep are), but always by performance on the racecourse. Thus it becomes an extremely interesting matter to see what are the changes which the breeder of thoroughbred stock has unconsciously produced—what are the differences between the racehorse of to-day and that of 50, 100, and 150 years ago. This was pointed out to me by the late Duke of Devonshire as a reason for supporting my proposal to secure and place in the Natural History Museum the skulls, limb-bones, hoofs, and other indestructible parts of great racehorses (and of other breeds), and also for having very accurately measured reduced models made of such horses, in order that we may after some years compare the proportions and structure at present arrived at with the later developments which the continual selection of winner’s blood in breeding must unconsciously produce. Such a collection was started by me in the museum, but it needs the assistance of owners of horses—both as to placing record specimens in the museum and in paying for the preparation of accurately reduced models by competent artists. It already comprises the skulls of Stockwell, Bend Or, and Ormonde, and several carefully made reduced models of celebrated horses. There is no doubt that the English racehorse has increased in size. He is a bigger animal to-day than he was 200 years ago, and the opinion of the best authorities is that he has increased on the average an inch in height at the withers in every twenty-five years. The racehorse has a much longer thigh-bone and upper-arm bone (in proportion to the rest of the leg) than has the cart-horse, and it is probable that this length has been continually increased by the selection of winners for breeding.

There are other points of scientific interest as to modern horses and their forefathers which are illustrated by valuable specimens and preparations placed by me in the Natural History Museum.

All those hairy warm-blooded quadrupeds which suckle their young, and are hence called mammals, are the descendants of small five-toed ancestors about the size of a spaniel. This is equally true of the elephant, the gorilla, the horse, and the ox. In the sands and clays deposited since the time of the chalk-sea, the remains (bones and teeth) of the ancestors of living mammals are found in great abundance. These sands and clays are called “the Tertiaries,” and are divided into lower, middle, and upper—whilst we recognise as “Post-Tertiaries” (or Quaternary) the later formed gravel and cave deposits in which the remains and weapons of the cave-men have been found. The Tertiaries consist of a series of deposits amounting to about 3000 feet in thickness, and they have taken several million years in depositing—no one can say how many.

In the upper Tertiary we find the remains of a kind of horse (the Hipparion), with well-developed “petti-toes” (like those of a pig) on each side of the big central toe (Fig. 10). In the middle Tertiary we find smaller ancestral horses, with three toes of nearly equal size, and in the lower Tertiary a horse-ancestor as small as a fox-hound (the Hyracotherium), with four toes on its front foot and three on its hind foot. Coming very close to this in general character is another small extinct animal of the same age, with five toes on each foot. As the toes have dwindled in number and size, leaving at last only the big central toe (as we pass upward from the small ancestors to the big modern horse), so the cheek-teeth, too, have changed. At first they had shallow crowns and divided fangs, and showed four prominences on the crown which were little, if at all, worn down during life. But as the horse became a bigger animal and took to eating coarse tooth-wearing grass, his teeth became deeper, and continued to grow for a long time, whilst the crown was rubbed down by the hard food, and a curiously complex pattern was brought into view by the exposure of the irregular bosses of the crown in cross section. And, meanwhile, the size and proportions of the horse-ancestors changed until, after being pig-like, then tapir-like, they acquired the perfect form and size for fleet and prolonged movement over firm, grass-grown plains. Horses and other large animals have to run, not only to escape pursuit by carnivorous enemies, but in order to travel, before they die from thirst, from a region suddenly dried up by drought to a region where water can be had. Many thousands of wild animals perish every year from local droughts in Africa. No small animals can exist in regions liable to be affected by sudden drought.

Three-toed horses, like the upper Tertiary Hipparion, are occasionally born as “monstrosities” from ordinary horses at the present day. All horses have the remnant of a toe on each side of the big central toe—in the form of splint-bones—concealed beneath the skin. In some breeds, for instance, in the “Shire” horses, which have enormous hairy feet in proportion to their huge strength and weight, these splint-bones tend to develop three little toe-joints, which are immovable, but obviously are “petti-toes.” It is related by Suetonius that Julius Cæsar used to ride a favourite horse which had several toes on each foot with claws like a lion. This was one of the “monstrosities” alluded to above, a throw-back to the ancestral many-toed condition. Specimens illustrating these, and all else which I am here relating concerning horses, and much more which I have not space to tell, may be seen in the North Hall of the Natural History Museum.

The three-toed ancestral horse, Hipparion, attained a fair size (that of a big donkey), and was shaped like the recent fleet one-toed horses. In the skull in front of the orbit, the Hipparion has a strongly marked depression in the bone, as long and broad as a hen’s egg, and in shape like one-half of an egg cut through longwise (see Fig. 11 pf). These pre-orbital cavities are known in deer, sheep, and antelopes; they lodge a gland resembling the tear-gland, which has, itself, a separate existence. Similar “glands” are found in the feet and ankle-joints of sheep and deer. The fluid which they secrete probably has an odour (not readily noticed by man) which helps to keep the herd together, or, on certain tracks when the fluid is smeared on to herbage. It is a remarkable fact that the skulls of the wild Mongolian horse and of the fossil horse of the cave-men, as also those of the commoner European breeds, have no trace of this pre-orbital cup or of the gland which Hipparion, their three-toed ancestor, possessed. Nor, indeed, have the asses and zebras. But the Southern horse, the Arab, and all the breeds into which his blood has prominently entered—as, for instance, the English racer (so-called “thoroughbred”) and the “Shire” horse (which is derived from the old English war-horse, in the making of which certainly four hundred years ago Arab blood and heavy Northern stock were mingled), do show, as a rule, a well-marked if shallow, cup-like depression in front of the orbit! In fact, as Mr. Lydekker has pointed out, the presence of this “pre-orbital cup” is evidence of the descent of its possessor from Arab ancestry. Many specimens of horses’ skulls showing this “cup” are exhibited in the Natural History Museum. We have not been able to find any trace of a gland like the “larmier” of deer and the “crumen” of antelopes on examining the soft tissues which overlie this cavity in horses of Arab descent, but it is not improbable that occasional instances of such survival will some day come to light. A very interesting fact in connection with this concavity and its indication of a distinction between the Northern (Mongolian) and the Southern (Arabian) horse is that in India a fossil horse of very late Tertiary date has been found, a true one-toed horse, not a Hipparion, which has the pre-orbital cup well marked, and is possibly the ancestor of the Arab.

There is no very great difference between the wild horse and wild asses and zebras. They are distinct “species,” but will breed together and produce “mules,” which in rare cases appear to be themselves fertile, although this is doubtful. The inner causes of the infertility of mules are not really known or understood. Nor, in fact, do we know really and experimentally what are the causes of fecundity and of infecundity in normally paired animals, including mankind. It is of the utmost importance to modern Statecraft that this subject should be studied, and there is a great field for experimental inquiry.

A clear mark of difference between the horse and the other species of the genus Equus (namely, the Asiatic and African asses and the zebras) is found in the curious wart-like knobs[1] on the legs, which are called “chestnuts.” These warty knobs appear to be the remains in a “dried up” condition of glands, such as are found in the legs of deer in a similar position, and secrete a glairy fluid. In new-born colts they sometimes exude a fluid, and also more rarely in adult horses. The fluid attracts other horses (probably by its smell), and also causes dogs to keep quiet. The horse has one of these wart-like “chestnuts” above the wrist joint (so-called knee) on the inner side of the fore-leg. And so have all the asses and zebras. But the horse (Fig. 12) has also a similar “chestnut” on the inner side of each of its hind-legs, below the heel-bone, or “hock.” This hind-leg chestnut is absent in all asses and zebras. This difference between the horse and ass can be tested by my readers on any roadside by their own observation. The hind-leg chestnut is also absent in certain breeds of ponies from Iceland and the Hebrides. Its presence and absence are interesting in connection with the disappearance of the face-gland or pre-orbital gland in all recent horses, asses, and zebras.

The “chestnuts” of the horse have sometimes been compared erroneously to the “pads” on the feet of other animals, and supposed to be survivals of a “pad” in each foot corresponding to the inner of the three toes of the Hipparion. The real representative, in the horse, of the chief pad of the foot of animals which do not (as the horse does) walk on the very tip of the toe, is a little knob called the “ergot.” The diagram, Fig. 13, shows how this ergot corresponds to the chief pad of the three-toed tapir’s foot, and so to that of the dog also.

The absence of living horses, or of any kind of ass or zebra, from the American Continent, when first colonised by Europeans in the sixteenth century, is a very singular fact. For we find a great number and variety of fossil remains of extinct horses in both North and South America. It seems possible that some epidemic disease swept them from the whole Continent not very many centuries before Europeans arrived—for there is evidence in South America of the co-existence there of peculiar kinds of horse with the “Indian” natives. It is even alleged that Cabot, in 1530, saw horses in Argentina, which were the last survivors of the native South American species. And it is also said that the Araucanian Indians of Patagonia have a peculiar breed of ponies, which may be derived in part from a native South American stock. I have never been able to procure a skull of this breed, or any detailed description of it. What is quite certain is that in the great cave of Ultima Speranza, in Patagonia—from which the hairy skin, dried flesh and blood, and unaltered dung as well as the bones, of the giant sloth Mylodon were obtained—a great number of the horny hoofs, and the teeth of a peculiar horse were also found some eight years ago, and are preserved in the Natural History Museum, together with the remains of the giant sloth. The condition of these remains is such that they cannot be many centuries old. The animals appear to have been contemporaneous with an early race of Indians who made use of the cave before the arrival of Europeans. A skull of one and a skeleton of another of the peculiar extinct South American horses (called Onohippidium and Hippidium), which survived until a late period in Patagonia and may possibly have been seen by Cabot, are shown in the Natural History Museum. Their bones are found in the superficial gravel and sand of the pampas.

To revert for a moment to the history of the English thoroughbred. It appears that in England in the middle of the eighteenth century a happy new infusion of the Arab race with that of existing stock (which already contained some Arab blood mixed with that of the Northern race) produced once and for all a very perfect and successful breed. That breed did not derive speed from the Arab, but “stamina,”—probably a powerful heart. It did not derive its size from the Arab, but the cross proved to be a large horse. It has never been improved since by any further admixture of Arab or Southern blood. Hence the (at first sight) misleading name “thoroughbred.” This name is not intended to imply that the breed is not originally a “blend,” but that those horses so called are pure-bred from the happy and wonderful mixture which a hundred and fifty years ago was embodied in the great sires Matchem, Herod, and Eclipse.

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