258 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



view, but much as we would a child's production in the present 

 day, in no way detracting from the credit of this earliest of the 

 world's known artists. 



It seems to be generally accepted by British naturalists that the 

 horse of the present day came from one original stock. This was 

 the view of Cobbold. (Museum of Natural History.) Martin Duncan 

 says : •' All true horses are descended from Equus caballus, a well 

 established species," and so on. Schmidt combats the view of the 

 domesticated horse having a single origin from the original wild 

 stock. He shows reason to believe that, perhaps, some of the 

 slighter breeds of the present day have resulted from the taming of 

 the broad-browed horses of Southern Germany, but certainly some 

 of the tamed thin-boned horses of the bronze pariod were of Asiatic 

 origin and introduced by nomads. Ecker also considers that of the 

 two breeds of German horse described by the Roman writers (Caesar 

 included), the small and hardy native race was indigenous, but the 

 Equus caballus germanicus (of Sanson and Pietrement), the heavy 

 horse of Central Germany, was an imported animal, probably of 

 Asiatic origin, tamed and introduced by nomadic tribes in pre- 

 historic times. 



Two groups of domesticated horses have been distinguished : (1) 

 the Oriental, with well developed cranium, forehead broad, face 

 small, inner side of crescents of upper molar with but few enamel 

 folds, limb bones graceful and firm ; the Arab, for example. (2) 

 The Occidental (Franck of Munich), face much larger as compared 

 with cranium, long narrow skull, forehead narrow, rims of orbits 

 somewhat forward, enamel folds of crescents of upper molars very 

 complex, limb bones thick and massive, and of less dense structure 

 than those of the Oriental. Nehring shows that the diluvial horse 

 of Central Germany — found at Westenregeln near Magdeburg, at 

 Thiede (Brunswick), also along the Rhiue in the neighbourhood of 

 Remagen — presented all the characteristic features of the Occidental 

 horse. Fraas has described a Sehussenried breed of fossil horses, 

 found in S. W. Wurtemburg, with very broad foreheads and grace- 

 ful limbs. In France, Sanson and Pietrement have arrivedatsome 

 very interesting conclusions with regard to the horses in relation to 

 the domesticated races of the present day. Pietrement shows that 

 it is untenable that the horse of Solutre (a primeval form of the 

 reindeer period, which abounds in caves near Macon, north of Lyons) 

 was tamed and domesticated, but Schmidt concludes that in it we 



