Part Vi. Cloudland.

We have seen the close resemblance of warm winds and seas between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific; but it was only in the North Atlantic region that the great Ice Age, in long pulsations, widened and shrank its Icefields. Ten thousand years ago (Wright) in the Niagara District, and seven thousand years ago (de Geer) in Finland, the edges of the Icefield were withdrawn for the last time, and the climate began to get warm and comfortable.

In America and in Europe, as the ice retreated, a belt of tundra crept closely in its wake, and in the rear of that a belt of green turfed grasses.

In Eastern Canada, and North-western Europe these green turfed pastures are varied with woodlands of such trees as cast their leaves in winter. Amid these changes the horse had vanished from North America, but survived in Asia, and slowly extended his range as the ice retreated from Europe. In Europe {34} as in America, man also widened his hunting grounds in the wake of the melting Icefield.

In the big region of the south-west wind the lands which surround the North Sea and the Baltic are different from all others, being under a low sun, cloudy, with only one day's sunshine out of seven. And Cloudland breeds a special type of man with blue eyes, a ruddy skin, and hair of chestnut, bay, brown, or dun, colours like those of horses.

Under the grey skies of Cloudland, man lacks the protective colour which in all other regions of the world defends the body from actinic light. I think we shall find this true of the horse also.

The original striped colouring of the Bays and Duns never developed in Western Europe with its climate of cloudy skies and verdant pastures.

THE WHITE HORSE. Now let us study the conditions following the Ice Age in Southern Russia. Here the Dun horse has a white coat for sunny snowy winters. Rumour says that foals are not born white, and it must be remembered that snowy winters are recent even as grassy plains.

This whiteness is not, like the summer colouring, a paint issued by the body to tint {35} the hair, but a mere absence of any colouring matter. It is as though the animal saved his stores to paint his inside to a warm red during the cold season instead of wasting it in mere vanity upon his outer clothing. At the same time nothing could be more reasonable than a white coat for concealment against a snowy background. Hares, Eskimo, and lots of other tribes are most particular in this matter, and among the best people of all snowy regions a white suit is the correct mode for winter. It may be that some tribes of ponies neglected to change in the spring, and so became conspicuous in summer, a fatal error where there are wolves about. These were not likely to prosper and raise children except under man's protection, so one suspects that white coats for summer wear date only from the human period. Men had a feeling, too, that the white horse was so beautiful that he must be sacred, a special gift of the gods. Without any special merit, being indeed of lower stamina and endurance than any other horses, the white stock were favoured by breeders. Left to themselves, they would die out rapidly in any sunny climate. One notes, however, that the Persian wild ass has a silvery white coat, the hue of his native desert. There are many animals whose {36} dark hair is white at the tips, so that they are really brunettes who masquerade as blondes.

BEARDED HORSES. The ancient horse-eating artist-savages of France have left us portraits of ponies strongly bearded under the lower jaw. In the earliest portrait we have of the Celtic pony (Ewart), Odin's eight-legged Sleipnir shows the coarse bearded cut of jaw. The Celtic pony types are bearded to the northward, clean-shaven towards the southward parts of their wide range. The Prejevalski, who is the Tarpan of Asia, is slightly bearded. So is the Kiang or wild ass of Asia. One finds the beard bristles in all the northern breeds of horses, not in the desert stocks to the south. Why then should northern horses want to grow a beard?

A horse has so small a stomach that his day's work to get sufficient grass is seven hours. Up to about fifty degrees of north latitude, he gets seven hours of daylight even in mid-winter. Northward of that he needs beard bristles to aid him in feeling and selecting grass in the darkness. Southward of that, if he is hunted by wolves or tigers, he needs a few beard bristles for night grazing except in cloudless regions where there is always starlight. So, {37} roughly, the range of bearded horses is that of long dark nights.

THE REGISTER OF SIZE. The size of horses varies with their nourishment.

On the scattered but rich bunch grasses of the desert, where there is much travel for a little food, the pasture registers the stature of the Bay as about fourteen hands two inches.

The scattered but rich bunch grass of the American steppe makes horses prosperous in summer but famished in the winter, so that the pasture registers a smaller horse than that of the desert--up to thirteen hands. Under the same conditions we may take the register of the Dun in Asia as up to thirteen hands.

The poor grass of the British moors registers a pony of ten to eleven hands.

Strong feeding of grain and hay registers stabled horses up to nineteen hands.

The great abundance of green turfed grass the year round in North-western Europe should, under its best conditions, register as large a horse as either steppe or desert.

THE THREE PASTURES. The Bay pasture and the Dun pasture are each of continental size, whereas the green pasture is only a small province. In the same way, the rock formations of the Bay and the Dun pastures are each {38} continuous for several thousands of miles. In sharp contrast is that little ragged edge of a great continent known as North-western Europe, a district which has many times been flooded by the sea, each bath making new beds of rock.

The lowlands of Great Britain, for example, have been frequently submerged, and the island shows samples of almost every rock formation known upon the earth. This European pasture then is not only small, but also varied in its rock formations, its soils, and its landscape. One may get a standard horse of registered size in the Bay range or the Dun range, but would expect to find on the green range of Europe not only many colours, but also many types derived from the primitive stock, strains of all sorts and sizes. A glance at three formations will show how much the build and size of a horse is varied by the rocks.

GRANITE. In North-western Europe the granitic or speckled formations form upstanding moorlands. The poor but abundant grass maintains ponies both light and heavy of build, derived from several kinds of ancestors. They are so secured from attack by beasts of prey that they do not need to run far and fast on ground where running would be dangerous. {39} These are grouped under the general name of Celtic pony.

LIMESTONE. Allowing for some districts, like the central plain of Ireland, where the Ice-sheet has left the country very badly drained, a limestone formation usually makes dry soil. The vegetable mould may hold a little water and make mud, as on the chalk downs, but the rock is so porous that most of the rain soaks down, and the waters run mainly underground. Moreover, the vegetable mould gives chemical qualities to this water, which is enabled to dissolve the rocks and form caverns on the underground water courses. At the same time the water becomes 'hard' with lime in solution, so that the springs will petrify moss and twigs.

The dryness of the ground tends to make horses sound of bone. The carbonate of lime in the water supplies them with the material for bone. As the result the bones are very light in proportion to their strength. So this pasture registers a well-built and very light horse. If such an animal is of Bay blood, he is larger and swifter than the Arab, lacking only in soundness and in travel endurance.

CLAY. As clay holds water, its soils provide abundance to the grass roots, and so produce {40} thick turf with a great weight of green forage to the acre. Such heavy feeding without any exercise in search of water, would, after the killing out of the wolves, tend to produce a large, heavy, slow-going gentle horse with steady nerves such as our draught stock, lacking in that soundness of feet and legs which is limited to the breeds of arid regions.

So far, the argument presents for the green pastures of cloudland horses of several colours; and, for the varied rock formations in the North Sea and Baltic basins, horses of many types.

Professor Ewart traces among the ancient wild horses of the forest species three very distinct types:

1. At the time when the glacial drift of the Rhine and Weser valleys had a climate like that of the Outer Hebrides of to-day, the conditions of cold and damp matured the Diluvial horse (Equus Caballus occidentalis). This animal stood fifteen hands, had a longer face than the general forest type, was coarsely built, had heavy fetlocks, a short upright pastern, a broad round foot. This is the cart horse breed.

2. The Grimaldi Grottoes in the Riviera preserve remains of a forest-upland horse, {41} large, coarse, heavy in build, with a short, broad face, and a flat profile.

3. The Solutré Caverns of France preserve paintings made by ancient savages of a small stout, chunky, bearded horse, rather like a long, low Iceland pony, with a short broad face, elk-like nose, and low-set tail, rough-haired towards the root. He stood from twelve to thirteen hands in height.

From these three forest varieties our draught horses are mainly descended; but there were also in Ancient Europe two other species besides that of the woodlands.

A. Siwalik type. A fifteen-hand horse, lightly built like the modern thoroughbred. The forehead recedes at an angle from the line of the face, and there is a prominence between the eyes. The limbs are long, withers high, and tail set on high.

B. Prejevalski Tarpan steppe type, the Dun of Northern Asia. The face is long, narrow and straight. The nasal chambers are large, causing a Roman nose. The limbs are clean, with close hocks and narrow feet. Height twelve to thirteen hands.

We must think then of such types as the Forest and Siwalik adapting themselves to the soils of North-western Europe.

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