Return of a Native

Since the first horse, scarcely larger than a fox, went scampering about in America in which were no humans to tame him, American horses have had their ups & downs. Automobiles brought them a down; Depression has given them an up. Wayne Dinsmore of Chicago, secretary and propagandist of the Horse Association of America, announced last week that the horse is once more the chief source of horsepower on Mid-western farms.

On a tour of Illinois and Iowa he found an average of 18 horses at field work for every tractor in operation. Half the tractors were idle. Horses and mules brought better prices proportionately than other livestock. More colts were being raised than for several years. Manufacturers of harness reported mounting sales. Purebred Percherons were bringing from $300 for mares to $1,000 for stallions. Medium weight animals (1,400 to 1,500 lb.) were most in demand. Blacksmiths who had become garagemen were becoming blacksmiths again. Low crop prices have made home-grown feeds for horses more economical than fuel for motors.

Saddle horses, too, have had better times during recent years, chiefly because of the popularity of hunting and polo and as a result of the Army's creation of the Remount Service, which breeds good horses for possible military use. In 1914 French and British buyers took the best of the Western horses. Three years later the U. S. Government could not find enough first-class saddle horses to equip a single cavalry division (4,000 horses). Previously Western horses had deteriorated through large purchases by the British for the Boer War and because of an admixture of homesteaders' draught horses with the sturdier stock taken West by pioneers. All Western horses contain some of the blood of the wild herds descended from the "Twelve Immortals," the dozen horses taken into Mexico by Cortes. Descendants of the "Twelve Immortals" roamed north into Texas and California, from lack of food grew small, rangy, fierce and wild.

The horse originated in North America. It had four toes on its fore feet, three toes on its hind feet. Moderns speak of it as Eohippus. It stood about 16 in. high, lived some 25 million years ago. In 24,900,000 years Eohippus grew up to the size of the modern horse, went wandering across America into Asia, across Asia, down into Africa. There the Libyans tamed him. From this horse is descended the race of pure-blooded Arab horses, famed for fleetness, which Arabian breeders still guard jealously. Some of his cousins went to France, were also tamed. These French cousins, distinguished by 24 vertebrae (the Arab has 23), begat the common modern horse. The Arab, meantime, was taken to Spain by the Moors. The Spaniards took him to America, thus completing for him a trip around the world back to the continent where his ancestor originated 25 million years before. The Americans had no horse until the Spaniards brought him back.

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