216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



The horse first appears in history in Egypt. Lenormant dates 

 his introduction into that country at the time of the " Shepherd 

 kings," about 2,200 B. C, say about 4,100 years ago. The ass 

 and other domestic animals are figured on the monuments much 

 earlier. Among the Assyrians he also appears after the other 

 domestic animals, and it was some 500 years after Egyptian mention, 

 and long after the ox, ass, sheep, and camel are spoken of that the 

 first allusion to him occurs in the Old Testament scriptures, and the 

 Hebrews probably did not use horses until Solomon's time. In 

 Psalms the horse commonly appears only on the side of their 

 enemies, and in a battle in the East, towards the Euphrates, where 

 David captured the cavalry, he destroyed most of the horses, 

 apparently because he could make no use of them (2 Saml. viii, 4). 

 It was some three hundred years after Solomon's reign before the 

 Greeks had cavalry; so historians tell us. 



There are in existence a very large number of ancient repre- 

 sentations of horses in statues, bas-reliefs, coins, engraved gems, 

 and other works of art, so that we probably know pretty well 

 what kind of an animal the horse of antiquity was. He was a 

 small, strong, tough, muscular beast, but he was not a swift one in 

 the modern sense. In a general way the relative fleetness and 

 strength of different breeds of horses is indicated by their form, 

 particularly by the angles which the bones of the legs form with 

 those of the body. In those breeds noted for their fleetness the 

 humerus forms a more acute angle with the shoulder-blade, and 

 the femur with the pelvis and tibia than in those breeds more 

 specially noted for their strength. This gives the latter heavier 

 necks and shoulders, and more rounded buttocks than the swifter 

 breeds have. This was the character of the horses of antiquity; 

 this was the horse of ancient Greek art, and remains the horse of 

 Art even to this day. 



I have examined all the ancient representations of horses within 

 my reach for many years, and they abundantly show that however 

 fond the ancients may have been of racing, their horses would 

 have stood no chance with the race-horses of to-day. There is a 

 difference between these ancient horses and those of the modern 

 course almost as great as the difference between an ancient 

 Greek or Roman chariot and a modern trotting sulky. A large 

 portion of the celebrated frieze of the Parthenon is in England 

 (known better as the Elgin marbles), on which there are over two 



