A horse has so small a stomach that his day's work to get sufficient grass is seven hours. Up to about fifty degrees of north latitude, he gets seven hours of daylight even in mid-winter. Northward of that he needs beard bristles to aid him in feeling and selecting grass in the darkness. Southward of that, if he is hunted by wolves or tigers, he needs a few beard bristles for night grazing except in cloudless regions where there is always starlight. So, {37} roughly, the range of bearded horses is that of long dark nights. [Sidenote: Size] THE REGISTER OF SIZE. The size of horses varies with their nourishment. On the scattered but rich bunch grasses of the desert, where there is much travel for a little food, the pasture registers the stature of the Bay as about fourteen hands two inches. The scattered but rich bunch grass of the American steppe makes horses prosperous in summer but famished in the winter, so that the pasture registers a smaller horse than that of the desert--up to thirteen hands. Under the same conditions we may take the register of the Dun in Asia as up to thirteen hands. The poor grass of the British moors registers a pony of ten to eleven hands. Strong feeding of grain and hay registers stabled horses up to nineteen hands. The great abundance of green turfed grass the year round in North-western Europe should, under its best conditions, register as large a horse as either steppe or desert. [Sidenote: The three pastures] THE THREE PASTURES. The Bay pasture and the Dun pasture are each of continental size, whereas the green pasture is only a small province. In the same way, the rock formations of the Bay and the Dun pastures are each {38} continuous for several thousands of miles. In sharp contrast is that little ragged edge of a great continent known as North-western Europe, a district which has many times been flooded by the sea, each bath making new beds of rock. The lowlands of Great Britain, for example, have been frequently submerged, and the island shows samples of almost every rock formation known upon the earth. This European pasture then is not only small, but also varied in its rock formations, its soils, and its landscape. One may get a standard horse of registered size in the Bay range or the Dun range, but would expect to find on the green range of Europe not only many colours, but also many types derived from the primitive stock, strains of all sorts and sizes. A glance at three formations will show how much the build and size of a horse is varied by the rocks. GRANITE. In North-western Europe the granitic or speckled formations form upstanding moorlands. The poor but abundant grass maintains ponies both light and heavy of build, derived from several kinds of ancestors. They are so secured from attack by beasts of prey that they do not need to run far and fast on ground where running would be dangerous. {39} These are grouped under the general name of Celtic pony.