Abstract
THE re-discovery of the so-called Equus przewalskii, or Mongolian wild pony, has during the last few years awakened renewed interest in the puzzling question of the origin and ancestry of our domesticated breeds of horses and their relations to their wild or semi-wild representatives, and workers on both sides of the Atlantic have been doing their best, with results more or less satisfactory (at least to themselves), to solve the problem. The subject, like an apparently impregnable fortress, has been attacked from several sides at once, in the hope that if one plan fails another may succeed; and while one worker has endeavoured to solve the mystery by the study of apparently vestigial structures, a second relies on cross-breeding, while a third believes that external characteristics are alone sufficient to decide the question. Prof. Ridgeway, on the other hand, has primarily attacked the problem from the point of view of the historian and the archaeologist, and it must be acknowledged that naturalists owe him a large debt of gratitude for bringing into prominence lines of evidence with which, from the very nature of the case, they are unfamiliar. Apparently, however, the author soon discovered that salvation was not to be found from archieological investigations alone, and that it was essential for him to enter in some detail into the natural history of Equus caballus and its allies. To one who has thus been compelled by force of circumstances to enter on paths of study other than his own, tender treatment should be accorded by the critic, and especially should this be so in the present instance, when the author has called to his assistance at least two naturalists who have specially studied the Equidie.
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L., R. The Thoroughbred Horse 1 . Nature 73, 126–127 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/073126a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073126a0