Through Magic Glasses and Other Lectures

NGS OF THE

e autumn laden with specimens for the microscope, while the rapidly darkening evenings will tempt us again on to the lawn star-gazing. On this our last lectu

or a long walk across the moor to visit the famous stone-circles, many of which are to be found not far off t

ng 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 barrows scattered here and there over the moor; and my mind drifted back to the days when, long before that pathway was worn, men

ched 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 land

, 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 an

ron. 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 fre

d animals they seemed, my thoughts roamed far away, and I saw in imagination scenes whe

e 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 de

s 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 Tar

stors 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, scrap

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ding 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

g.

"Kulan," the Horse-ass of

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 1500 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

g.

d Horse, the "Ke

re with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-coloured 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 t

onkeys, 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 hy?nas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. There I

and Indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented its

el 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 wh

ee-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 hy?na, prowling around to att

, or horses of the dawn, by naturalists. They were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they

eared, 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.

l his knee in the front legs, and at his hock h in the hind legs. His true knee k and elbow e are close up to the body. What we call his foot or hoof is really th

ger 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 i and the grinding teeth g of a horse.

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of Hors

rs. k, Knee. h, Hock or heel. f, Foot. s, Splints or remains of the two lost toes. e, E

ppus 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

while in the old world as asses, quaggas, and zebras, and probably horses, they flourished in Asia, Europe, and Africa, they ce

e 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 a

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 ances

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