imal for Use of Men.--Mental
Peculiarities.--Variability of Body.--Spontaneous Variations due to
Climate.--Variations of Breeds.--Effect of the Invention of
Horseshoes.--Donkeys and Mules compared with Horse.--Especial Value
of these Animals.--Diminishing Value of Horses in Modern
Civilization.--Continued Need of their Service in War.

The largest economic problem which primitive people on their way upward
towards civilization had unconsciously to face was that of obtaining
some kind of strength which could be added to the power of their own
weak limbs. For all his eminent capacities of body, man is not a strong
animal, nor is he so built that he can apply the measure of strength
that is in him to good advantage. There are scores if not hundreds
of species with which he came in contact in his effort to dominate
nature that are stronger, swifter, and better provided with natural
weapons. With the first step upward, as in almost all the succeeding
steps, the advance depended on securing more energy than that with
which our kind was directly endowed. It is hardly too much to say
that the progress of mankind beyond the savage state would probably
never have been effected but for the bodily help which has been
rendered by a few domesticated animals.

From the point of view of the student of domesticated animals the races
of men may well be divided into those which have and those which have
not the use of the horse. Although there are half a score of other
animals which have done much for man, which have indeed stamped
themselves upon his history, no other creature has been so inseparably
associated with the great triumphs of our kind, whether won on the
battle-field or in the arts of peace. So far as material comfort, or
even wealth, is concerned, we of the northern realms and present age
could, perhaps, better spare the horse from our present life than
either sheep or horned cattle; but without this creature it is certain
that our civilization would never have developed in anything like its
present form. Lacking the help which the horse gives, it is almost
certain that, even now, it could not be maintained.

We know the ancient natural history of the horse more completely than
that of any other of our domesticated animals. We can trace the steps
by which its singularly strong limbs and feet, on which rests its value
to man, were formed in the great laboratory of geologic time. The story
is so closely rel