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CONCLUSIONS.   43 I

which I imagine this domestication to have been brought about. and I shall treat of it again later.

That this horse did not descend from the Anau horse, which was trained for speed, is already shown in the remarks of Caesar (Bell. Gall., iv, 2), Tacitus (German., 6), and Appianus (d. r. Celt., 3), that the native horses, which were badly shaped, not well-set and not fast, but of great powers of endurance through daily strain, and in emergencies contented with the bark of trees, were nevertheless preferred by the Germans to those imported.

Already Modi* has said that speed was the characteristic in a horse that impressed most an ancient Iranian. He, therefore, in common with his Aryan brothers, named this swiftest of the animals " aspa " from the old Aryan root " a9" (to go rapidly) . The word means one who goes rapidly. It seems that the speed of the horse was the cause which connected horse-racing with the festivals in honor of Mithras, the god of light. The primitive ancient Iranian, being much exposed to influences of Nature and coming into greater contact with Nature, began to clothe the greatest of Nature's objects with the ideas most common to him on the surface of the earth. Just as he saw his swift horse cover long distances in a short time, he saw the sun go over the immense vault of heaven in a short time. So he called the sun, in his Avesta, by the name of " Aurvat-aspa "—the swift-horsed.

Equus caballus fossilis Riitimeyer (its recent form is Equus przewalskii)

Equus caballus robustus Nehring (the type of the steppes)

Equus caballus (the type o

pumpellii Duerst the desert)

Equus caballus nehringi Duerst (the type of the woods)

Indian and   Ancient Iranian and   Bronze age horse

Chinese horses   Babylonian horses   of Europe   Celtic

Hallstatt horse

of Europe

Egyptian   Modern pony breeds

Gree and Roman horses

Turkish

Arabian horses

pony

Persian

41 Berber

Andalusian horse   Thoroughbred

English race-horse

Sardinian,
Corsican horse,
horses of la Camargue,;
Frioul, etc,

Thus, then, is the horse of Anau the first fleet, the first desert, the first oriental domestic horse; and his genealogy, as well as his connection with the other European horses is shown instructively in the above diagram.

*Modi, Jivanji Jamshedji, The horse in Ancient Iran. Journ. Anthropolog. Soc. Bombay, vol. xv, No. r, p. 5, x895.