I want you to take a journey with me which I took in imagination a few days ago, as I lay on my back on the sunny moor and watched the Dartmoor ponies.
It was a calm misty morning one day last week, giving promise of a bright and sunny day, when I started off for a long walk across the moor to visit the famous stone-circles, many of which are to be found not far off the track, called Abbot’s Way, leading from Buckfast Abbey, on the Dart, to the Abbey of Tavistock, on the Tavy.
My mind was full of the olden times as I pictured to myself how, seven hundred years or more ago, some Benedictine monk from Tavistock Abbey, in his black robe and cowl, paced this narrow path on his way to his Cistercian brethren at Buckfast, meeting some of them on his road as they wandered over the desolate moor in their white robes and black scapularies in search of stray sheep. For the Cistercians were shepherds and wool-weavers, while the Benedictines devoted themselves to learning, and the track of about twenty-five miles from one abbey to the other, which still remains, was worn by the members of the two communities and their dependents, the only variety in whose lives consisted probably in these occasional visits one to the other.
Yet even these monks belonged to modern times compared to the ancient Britons who raised the stone-circles, and buried their dead in the barrows scattered here and there over the moor; and my mind drifted back to the days when, long before that pathway was worn, men clad in the skins of beasts hunted wild animals over the ground on which I was treading, and lived in caves and holes of the ground.
I wondered, as I thought of them, whether the cultured monks and the uncivilized Britons delighted as much in the rugged scenery of the moor as I did that morning. For many miles in front of me the moor stretched out wild and treeless; the sun was shining brightly upon the mass of yellow furze and deep-red heather, drawing up the moisture from the ground, and causing a kind of watery haze to shimmer over the landscape; while the early mist was rising off the tors, or hill-tops, in the distance, curling in fanciful wreaths around the rugged and stony summits, as it dispersed gradually in the increasing heat of the day.
The cattle which were scattered in groups here and there feeding on the dewy grass were enjoying the happiest time of the year. The moor, which in winter affords them scarcely a bare subsistence, is now richly covered with fresh young grass, and the sturdy oxen fed solemnly and deliberately, while the wild Dartmoor ponies and their colts scampered joyously along, shaking their manes and long flowing tails, and neighing to each other as they went; or clustered together on some verdant spot, where the colts teased and bit each other for fun, as they gambolled round their mothers.
It was a pleasure, there on the open moor, with the lark soaring overhead, and the butterflies and bees hovering among the sweet-smelling furze blossoms, to see horses free and joyous, with no thought of bit or bridle, harness or saddle, whose hoofs had never been handled by the shoeing-smith, nor their coats touched with the singeing iron. Those little colts, with their thick heads, shaggy coats, and flowing tails, will have at least two years more freedom before they know what it is to be driven or beaten. Only once a year are they gathered together, claimed by their owners and branded with an initial, and then left again to wander where they will. True, it is a freedom which sometimes has its drawbacks, for if the winter is severe the only food they can get will be the furze-tops, off which they scrape the snow with their feet; yet it is very precious in itself, for they can gallop when and where they choose, with head erect, sniffing at the wind and crying to each other for the very joy of life.
Now as I strolled across the moor and watched their gambols, thinking how like free wild animals they seemed, my thoughts roamed far away, and I saw in imagination scenes where other untamed animals of the horse tribe are living unfettered all their lives long.
First there rose before my mind the level grass-covered pampas of South America, where wild horses share the boundless plains with troops of the rhea, or American ostrich, and wander, each horse with as many mares as he can collect, in companies of hundreds or even thousands in a troop. These horses are now truly wild, and live freely from youth to age, unless they are unfortunate enough to be caught in the more inhabited regions by the lasso of the hunter. In the broad pampas, the home of herds of wild cattle, they dread nothing. There, as they roam with one bold stallion as their leader, even beasts of prey hesitate to approach them, for, when they form into a dense mass with the mothers and young in their centre, their heels deal blows which even the fierce jaguar does not care to encounter, and they trample their enemy to death in a very short time. Yet these are not the original wild horses we are seeking, they are the descendants of tame animals, brought from Europe by the Spaniards to Buenos Ayres in 1535, whose descendants have regained their freedom on the boundless pampas and prairies.
As I was picturing them careering over the plains, another scene presented itself and took their place. Now I no longer saw around me tall pampas-grass with the long necks of the rheas appearing above it, for I was on the edge of a dreary, scantily covered plain between the Aral Sea and the Balkash Lake in Tartary. To the south lies a barren sandy desert, to the north the fertile plains of the Kirghiz steppes, where the Tartar feeds his flocks, and herds of antelopes gallop over the fresh green pasture; and between these is a kind of no-man’s land, where low scanty shrubs and stunted grass seem to promise but a poor feeding-ground.
Yet here the small long-legged but powerful “Tarpans,” the wild horses of the treeless plains of Russia and Tartary, were picking their morning meal. Sturdy wicked little fellows they are, with their shaggy light-brown coats, short wiry manes, erect ears, and fiery watchful eyes. They might well be supposed to be true wild horses, whose ancestors had never been tamed by man; and yet it is more probable that even they escaped in early times from the Tartars, and have held their own ever since, over the grassy steppes of Russia and on the confines of the plains of Tartary. Sometimes they live almost alone, especially on the barren wastes where they have been seen in winter, scraping the snow off the herbage as our ponies do on Dartmoor. At other times, as in the south of Russia, where they wander between the Dnieper and the Don, they gather in vast herds and live a free life, not fearing even the wolves, which they beat to the ground with their hoofs. From one green oasis to another they travel over miles of ground.
[11] Byron’s Mazeppa.
As I followed them in their course I fancied I saw troops of yet another animal of the horse tribe, the “Kulan,” or Equus hemionus, which is a kind of half horse, half ass (p. 393), living on the Kirghiz steppes of Tartary and spreading far beyond the range of the Tarpan into Tibet. Here at last we have a truly wild animal, never probably brought into subjection by man. The number of names he possesses shows how widely he has spread. The Tartars call him “Kulan,” the Tibetans “Kiang,” while the Mongolians give him the unpronounceable name of “Dschiggetai.” He will not submit to any of them, but if caught and confined soon breaks away again to his old life, a “free and fetterless creature.”
No one has ever yet settled the question whether he is a horse or an ass, probably because he represents an animal truly between the two. His head is graceful, his body light, his legs slender and fleet, yet his ears are long and ass-like; he has narrow hoofs, and a tail with a tuft at the end like all the ass tribe; his color is a yellow brown, and he has a short dark mane and a long dark stripe down his back as a donkey has, though this last character you may also see in many of our Devonshire ponies. Living often on the high plateaux, sometimes as much as fifteen hundred feet above the sea, this “child of the steppes” travels in large companies even as far as the rich meadows of Central Asia; in summer wandering in green pastures, and in winter seeking the hunger-steppes where sturdy plants grow. And when autumn comes the young steeds go off alone to the mountain heights to survey the country around and call wildly for mates, whom, when found, they will keep close to them through all the next year, even though they mingle with thousands of others.
Till about ten years ago the Equus hemionus was the only truly wild horse known, but in the winter of 1879–80 the Russian traveller Przevalsky brought back from Central Asia a much more horse-like animal, called by the Tartars “Kertag” and by the Mongols “Statur.” It is a clumsy, thick-set, whitish-gray creature with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-colored head; its legs have a red tint down to the knees, beyond which they are blackish down to the hoofs. But the ears are small, and it has the broad hoofs of the true horse, and warts on his hind legs, which no animal of the ass tribe has. This horse, like the Kiang, travels in small troops of from five to fifteen, led through the wildest parts of the Dsungarian desert, between the Altai and Tianschan Mountains, by an old stallion. They are extremely shy, and see, hear, and smell very quickly, so that they are off like lightning whenever anything approaches them.
So having travelled over America, Europe, and Asia, was my quest ended? No; for from the dreary Asiatic deserts my thoughts wandered to a far warmer and more fertile land, where between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea rise the lofty highlands of Abyssinia, among which the African wild ass (Asinus tæniopus), the probable ancestor of our donkeys, feeds in troops on the rich grasses of the slopes, and then onwards to the bank of a river in Central Africa where on the edge of a forest, with rich pastures beyond, elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes and buffaloes, lions and hyænas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. There I saw the herds of Zebras in all their striped beauty coming down from the mountain regions to the north, and mingling with the darker-colored but graceful quaggas from the southern plains, and I half-grieved at the thought how these untamed and free rovers are being slowly but surely surrounded by man closing in upon them on every side.
I might now have travelled still farther in search of the Onager, or wild ass of the Asiatic and Indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented itself, as I flung myself down on the moor to ponder over the early history of all these tribes.
Where have they all come from? Where shall we look for the first ancestors of these wild and graceful animals? For the answer to this question I had to travel back to America, to those Western United States where Professor Marsh has made such grand discoveries in horse history. For there, in the very country where horses were supposed never to have been before the Spaniards brought them a few centuries ago, we have now found the true birthplace of the equine race.
Come back with me to a time so remote that we cannot measure it even by hundred of thousands of years, and let us visit the territories of Utah and Wyoming. Those highlands were very different then from what they are now. Just risen out of the seas of the Cretaceous Period, they were then clothed with dense forests of palms, tree-ferns, and screw-pines, magnolias and laurels, interspersed with wide-spreading lakes, on the margins of which strange and curious animals fed and flourished. There were large beasts with teeth like the tapir and the bear, and feet like the elephant; and others far more dangerous, half bear, half hyæna, prowling around to attack the clumsy paleotherium or the anoplotherium, something between a rhinoceros and a horse, which grazed by the waterside, while graceful antelopes fed on the rich grass. And among these were some little animals no bigger than foxes, with four toes and a splint for the fifth, on their front feet, and three toes on the hind ones.
These clumsy little animals, whose bones have been found in the rocks of Utah and Wyoming, have been called Eohippus, or horses of the dawn, by naturalists. They were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they belonged to the horse tribe, and already the fifth toe common to most other toed animals was beginning to disappear.
This was in the Eocene Period, and before it passed away with its screw-pines and tree-ferns, another rather larger animal, called the Orohippus, had taken the place of the small one, and he had only four toes on his front feet. The splint had disappeared, and as time went on still other animals followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. First one as large as a sheep (Mesohippus) had only three toes and a splint. Then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock of a horse’s skeleton.
You must notice that a horse’s foot really begins at the point which we call his knee in the front legs, and at his hock in his hind legs. His true knee and elbow are close up to the body. What we call his foot or hoof is really the end of the strong, broad, middle toe covered with a hoof, and farther up his foot we can feel two small splints, which are remains of two other toes.
Skeleton of Horse or Ass.
i, Incisor teeth. g, Grinding teeth, with the gap between the two as in all grass-feeders. k, Knee. h, Hock or heel. f, Foot. s, Splints or remains of the two lost toes. e, Elbow. w, Wrist. h, Hand-bone. t, Middle toe of three joints, 1, 2, 3 forming the hoof.
Meanwhile during these long succeeding ages while the foot was lengthening out into a slender limb the animals became larger, more powerful, and more swift, the neck and head became longer and more graceful, the brain-case larger in front and the teeth decreased in number, so that there is now a large gap between the biting teeth and the grinding teeth of a horse. Their slender limbs too became more flexible and fit for running and galloping, till we find the whole skeleton the same in shape, though not in size, as in our own horses and asses now.
They did not, however, during all this time remain confined to America, for, from the time when they arrived at an animal called Miohippus, or lesser horse, which came after the Mesohippus and had only three toes on each foot, we find their remains in Europe, where they lived in company with the giraffes, opossums, and monkeys which roamed over these parts in those ancient times. Then a little later we find them in Africa and India; so that the horse tribe, represented by creatures about as large as donkeys, had spread far and wide over the world.
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 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 American 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, seems 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.
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 Æsthetics,” “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.
Belt, T. G., an English traveller of the nineteenth century, best known by his book, “The Naturalist in Nicaragua.”
Blatchley, W. S., American naturalist and geologist, born 1859. Has taken part in many important geological surveys, and is State geologist of Indiana. Among his writings are “Gleanings from Nature,” and many important highly technical contributions to State scientific publications.
Bruner, L., American professor of entomology and ornithology at the University of Nebraska, born 1566. Is the State entomologist of Nebraska. Has written “An Introduction to the Study of Entomology,” and some papers on the locusts of Argentina, as well as many technical scientific reports in State papers, etc.
Burroughs, John, American essayist, born 1837. Has written much on nature observation. Among his books are “Wake Robin,” “Winter Sunshine,” “Birds and Poets,” “Pepacton,” “Fresh Fields,” “Signs and Seasons,” etc. He was at first a school teacher, then a clerk of the treasury, then a national bank examiner, and he now lives on a farm, devoting himself to literature and fruit culture.
Hopley, Mrs. C. C., an English author who lived much in America, and made a special study of “Snakes,” on which subject she wrote a great deal. Her book entitled “Snakes” is the most important record of her work.
Huxley, T. H., Famous English biologist, born 1825; died 1895. Was assistant surgeon in the navy, then professor of natural history, rector of Aberdeen University, and president of the Royal Society. Among his books are, “Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature,” “Comparative Anatomy,” “Lay Sermons,” “Critiques and Addresses,” “Physiography,” “The Crayfish,” “Science and Culture,” “Evolution and Ethics,” “The Anatomy of Invertebrate Animals,” etc.
Jefferies, Richard, born near Swindon, Wiltshire, Nov. 6, 1848; died Aug. 14, 1887. A naturalist whose fascinating writings were recognized as classics only after his death. Among his most popular books are, “The Gamekeeper at Home” (1878), “Wild Life in a Southern Country” (1879), “The Amateur Poacher” (1880), “Round About a Great Estate” (1881), “Nature Near London,” and “The Story of My Heart” (1883), “Red Deer” (1884), and “The Open Air” (1885).
Jordan, David Starr, President Leland Stanford, Jr., University; born Gainesville, N.Y., Jan. 19, 1851; graduated Cornell M. S., 1872; M. D. Indiana Medical College, 1875; (Ph.D. Butler University, 1878; LL.D. Cornell University, 1886). Held chairs in various collegiate institutions, 1872–79; assistant to U. S. Fish Commission, 1877–91; professor of zoölogy 1879–85, and president 1885–91, Indiana University; president Leland Stanford Jr., University since 1891; president California Academy of Sciences 1896–98; also U. S. Commissioner in charge of fur-seal investigations, etc. Author: “A Manual of Vertebrate Animals of Northern United States,” “Science Sketches,” “Fishes of North and Middle America” (4 vols.); “Footnotes to Evolution,” “Matka and Kotik,” “Care and Culture of Men,” “The Innumerable Company,” “Imperial Democracy,” “Animal Life,” “Animal Forms,” “The Strength of Being Clean,” “Standeth God within the Shadow,” also numerous papers on Ichthyology, in procedures of various societies and government bureaus.
Maeterlink, Maurice, Belgian dramatist and poet, born 1864. He began early to write plays, which were translated into English and represented in London. He has written “Le Trésor des Humbles,” “Aglavaine and Selysette,” “Pélléas and Melisande,” “The Intruder,” “Princess Maleine,” “Wisdom and Destiny.” He has been called the “Belgian Shakespeare.”
Morley, Margaret W., author and teacher, born 1858. Has taught in New York State and in the West. She is the author of “A Song of Life,” “Life and Love,” “A Few Familiar Flowers,” “Flowers and their Friends,” “The Bee People,” “The Honey Makers,” “Seed Babies,” “Little Wanderers,” “Wasps and their Ways,” etc.
Thoreau, Henry David, born at Concord, Mass., July 12, 1817; died May 6, 1862. After his graduation from Harvard, in 1837, he helped his father make lead pencils. In 1839 he began his careful studies on nature, and made a voyage on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers described in his first book. His most popular work, “Walden, or Life in the Woods,” was published in 1854. After his death several volumes were made up from his voluminous diaries. His collected writings, in ten volumes, were published in 1893.
Wallace, A. R., noted English naturalist and traveller, born 1822. Was educated as a land surveyor, but turned his attention exclusively to natural history. He explored the valleys of the Amazon and Rio Negro, travelled in the Malay Archipelago and Papua. He and Darwin both announced together the theory of natural selection. He wrote “Travels on the Amazon,” “Palm Trees of the Amazon,” “The Malay Archipelago,” “Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,” “Geographical Distribution of Animals,” “Tropical Nature,” “Island Life,” etc.
Wilson, A., English physiologist, lecturer, and journalist, born 1852. Educated Edinburgh University and Medical School. Has written much on popular physiology in the newspapers and magazines. Is the author of “Studies on Life,” “Leisure Time Studies,” “Science Stories,” “Chapters on Evolution,” “Leaves from a Naturalist’s Note Book,” “Wild Animals,” “Elements of Zoölogy,” etc.