BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOYS' OWN COLUMN.

SOME FACTS ABOUT AN OLD FRIEND.

HOW HORSES WON THE • WAR

Dear Boyi,— "Horses, horses, horses," boomed the gramophone in the next room, reproducing in roaring tones the music and song of a popular jazz record. I was feeling particularly drowsy, yet couldn't sleep, so, very lazily, I reached for the encyclopaedia and turned up the chapter on horses. To me horses have always had somewhat of an attraction, but, beyond the fact that some horses gallop round a track for the amusement of people at a race meeting, and others pull fruiterers' carts round about the city, while yet others—lucky creatures—spend their lives on farms among the hay and the freshness of the country pastures, I know nothing of the kings of the American prairie. Just to pass the time away, I decided to read a chapter or two about horses, and see what I could find out about them. I was rather surprised to learn that the writer considered that ponies won the war! I read on. He explained how, in the great coal mines, hundreds of feet beneath the surface, where any kind of machinery would be dangerous, little ponies worked in the darkness hauling coal to drive the machinery which made our ammunition, which canned our food, and which manufactured medicines during those terrible four years when Europe's peace was shattered by the booming of the cannon of the World War. All this, of course was very true, for without coal the equipment of our glorious soldiers could never have been made, and without the little mine ponies the coal could never have found its way to the mouths of the hungry furnaces. However, the importance of horses is not so much in modern days, although even now the horse is not tq be despised. His time was at the beginning of man's rise above the animals that surrounded him. As the mind of man grew he thought about taming wild animals and employing them as his servants. The roving wolf was persuaded to stay by the cave mouth and warn the inhabitants of the approach of danger. He was also trained to help in the hunt, and so assisted in providing food for man. In the fieetfooted horse, speeding over the plains and forest clearings man saw great possibilities. If he could mouif on tfce back of one of these animals he could travel three times as fast a* he could on foot; he could barter goods with a Histant people, and become a merchant if the rovers of the plain could be made to carry his goods backwards and forwards; he could attach the horse to a harrow, which, when pulled over the ground, would open it up to the air and rain, and make it fertile that crops would grow easily. Surely, if this four-footed giant be pressed into the services of man, the root of civilisation would get a firm hold. And so it was. The horse was captured, and since the day when the first wild horse succumbed to the mastery of man, we have had a firm and steadfast friend, who not only gave us civilisation, but helped us to keep it once we had it. With the coming of the petrol engine the future of the horse does not aeem a bright one, but of this we can be sure, that the horse family will never be extinct while man roams >9> — the earth, f*r no mechanical device in the world can serve a man as l^^^tJ*^^^ 0 doei a horse, returning not oniy power for kindness, but also kindness for kindness.