PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 143 



burden and of draught ; and where men had such means 

 of supplementing their own strength they made great 

 advances. In Asia, in Europe, and in North Africa where 

 \he country afforded the horse, the ass, the ox, the buffalo, 

 the camel and the elephant, men soon advanced in civilization. 

 But in North America the natives, though they were 

 ingenious people, remained savages ; and also in Southern 

 and in Central Africa, though there were plenty of large 

 mammalia, yet as they were not such as could be domesti- 

 cated and used as beasts of burden, the savages remained 

 in their barbarism. The immediate result of the posses- 

 sion of beasts of burden and of draught is to increase the 

 productiveness of the soil, to save men the labour of 

 digging, to promote trade by producing a surplus of food 

 and distributing it ; and also to develop the arts of war by 

 enabling swift marches to be made, by furnishing an army 

 with cavalry as its eyes and ears, and to bear down the 

 enemy by a furious charge ; and to facihtate the transport 

 of war materials. 



The chief of these beasts of burden and of draught is 

 certainly the horse. 



In the early Phocene and late Miocene Ages the family 

 of the horses was represented by the hipparion, a small, 

 slender and graceful animal possessed of three well- 

 defined toes on each hmb bearing hoofs, one strong and 

 large in the middle, while the two lateral toes were so 

 small that they did not extend below^ the fetlock, but 

 might be compared to dew claws. The next step above 

 the hipparion was the anchitherium. 



It is very remarkable that occasionally horses have been 

 born with tridactyl feet similar to the ancestral type. 

 The tarpon and the wild horse of Tartary are the nearest 

 examples of the stock from which the domestic horses are 

 derived. It was in the Polished Stone Age that domestic 

 horses were introduced into Europe. Their remains are 



