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The Dartmoor Ponies: Asia

And now, curiously enough, they began to forsake, or to die out in, the land of their birth. Why they did so we do not know; but while in the old world as asses, quaggas, and zebras, and probably horses, they flourished in Asia, Europe, and Africa, they certainly died out in America, so that ages afterwards, when that land was discovered, no animal of the horse tribe was found in it.

And the true horse, where did he arise? Born and bred probably in Central Asia from some animal like the "Kulan," or the "Kertag," he proved too useful to savage tribes to be allowed his freedom, and it is doubtful whether in any part of the world he escaped subjection. In our own country he probably roamed as a wild animal till the savages, who fed upon him, learned in time to put him to work; and when the The Dartmoor Ponies Romans came they found the Britons with fine and well-trained horses.

Yet though tamed and made to know his master, he has, as we have seen, broken loose again in almost all parts of the world - in America on the prairies and pampas, in Europe and Asia on the steppes, and in Australia in the bush. And even in Great Britain, where so few patches of uncultivated land still remain, the young colts of Dartmoor, Exmoor, and Shetland, though born of domesticated mothers, seem to assert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the Kulan, the Tarpan, and the Zebra do in the wild desert or grassy plain. NOTES ALLEN, GRANT, English scientist and man of letters; born 1848, died 1899. Was born in Canada, and passed his boyhood there. Educated in France and at Oxford University. He wrote "Physiological Esthetics," "Vignettes from Nature," "The Evolutionist at Large," "Force and Energy," many scientific papers in periodicals, and some fiction. "Strange Stories," "The Reverend John Creedy," "Philistia," "The British Barbarians" among others.