ODD-TOED UNGULATES (pERISSODACTYLa) 281 



eighteen races and was never beaten, and died in 

 1789. 



White horses have been considered sacred by 

 many nations from east to west. The sacrifice of 

 white horses and divination by means of horses were 

 featnres of the religion of the Teutonic and Scandi- 

 navian peoples. 



The first use of the horse was for war, attached to 

 a chariot, which served only to carry the warrior to 

 the place of battle. Later, the chariot was armed 

 with scythes and other weapons, and itself became 

 an engine of war. It was not till a later period that 

 the horse was ridden. The ox was used in agri- 

 culture, and especially for ploughing, until the Middle 

 Ages. The representation of a horse drawing a 

 harrow in the Bayeux Tapestry (about 11th century) 

 is said to be the earliest record of such a use of the 

 horse. 



The fossil remains of horses, which are abundant 

 in the tertiarj^ deposits of Europe, Asia, North 

 Africa, and North America, have enabled geologists 

 to work out the evolutionary history of the horse in 

 greater detail than that of any other mammal. The 

 close analogy of the limb bones of the horse with 

 those of man suggests that it must have descended 

 from an animal with five-fingered limbs. The splint 

 bones, to which reference has been made above, have 

 indeed occasionally been known in existing horses to 

 bear toes, which would correspond with the second 

 and fourth digits of the five-fingered limb. Caesar^ 

 is said to have ridden on a horse with three toes, and 



* Pliuy, ' N. H,,' viii, 42,64. 



