Since dapples have not been traced to any other country, and may well be native to woodlands of Western Europe, it seems fair reasoning which gives that special quality of colour to a type we will now define as the European horse. I do not contend that the woodlands were more extensive than the open downs, or that any large proportion of European horses developed dapples. I do contend that a certain stocky build and well conditioned heaviness of type more or less dappled is characteristic of Western Europe, just as a more or less striped Dun is typical of Asia, and more or less striped Bay typical of Northern Africa. {51} [Sidenote: Professor Ridgeway's theories] I am nothing more than an old rough-neck. My poor little theories about the Europe horse have the impudence to contradict a great authority. Professor Ridgeway brings historic proof that the Tarpan, who is the Prejevalski, the wild Dun of Asia, inhabited the green pasture of Europe, that he was a small scrawny and foul-tempered person unfit to ride, and that his crossings with the slender imported Bay produced our gigantic sturdy and gentle draught horse. I have ridden so many Duns, packed so many, loved them so much, that I am sure they would agree with me in bucking hard against Professor Ridgeway. I do not believe that the Dun wore his tawny colour in green pastures where he would be a target. I do not believe that the wild Dun in an average district was small, scrawny or vicious. I do not believe that a horse of the Dun type could be an ancestor to draught stock. History is the lens through which we see the past--out of focus. Against the evidence of history and the proofs of science, I have nothing to offer except the common heritage of sight and reason, with that experience which trains a fellow to interpret landscape and to care for horses. I cannot expect others to ride as I have through {52} the green pasturage of Cloudland seeing as I do under the combed, trim countryside of to-day the fierce rough wilderness of prehistoric times and of outlandish frontiers. It is not by asking the way or reading sign-posts that one reasons out the route of a day's journey, but by a vivid sense of light, form, colour and atmospheric distance, the old familiar structure of the rocks, the slopes of drainage, the course of running waters, the shape of woods and trees as fashioned by the wind, the ancient dangers deflecting trails and roads, and the phenomena which result in forts and churches, villages and towns. [Sidenote: Sensing the country]