Prehistoric Horses of Europe. 85 



transported to his home. The spine portion appears to have 

 been generally left on the field, as vertebr* are seldom 

 found among the ossiferous debris in caves. M. Dupont, 

 after the manner so successfully adopted by M. Steenstrup 

 with regard to the mammalian bones of the kjokkenmoddings, 

 constructed drawings of the skeleton of a horse and a bear, 

 showing in colour the bones or portions of bones found in 

 caves inhabited by man (" Congres International, etc.," 1872, 

 pi. 76 and 77). Another peculiarity of osseous remains, 

 when treated by human carnivores, was that the spongy and 

 cartilaginous portions were not removed, thus presenting a 

 marked contrast to those encountered in the den of the 

 hysena, and in the Ivjokkenmoddings. With regard to the 

 latter, M. Steenstrup proved, by an ingenious chain of acute 

 observation and deductive reasoning, that the people who 

 formed these refuse heaps were in possession of domestic 

 dogs, which treated the refuse bones much in the same way 

 as the hyaena. ISTow, as the bones in the Belgian caves 

 inhabited by man were not so treated, we may safely con- 

 clude that there were no domestic dogs in those days, at 

 least in that part of Europe. M. Dupont ("Les Temps 

 Prehistoriques en Belgiques," p. 173) makes a curious point 

 with regard to the frequency with which certain caudal 

 vertebras of the horse were met with. He observes that out 

 of 157 of these bones found in the Trou de Chaleux, 18 were 

 those of the first 4 vertebrae, while 139 were pretty equally 

 distributed among the remaining 9 (the caudal vertebrae of 

 the horse being 13 in number). From these data he infers 

 that the hippophagous hunters were in the habit of cutting 

 off the tails of the captured animals between the fourth and 

 fifth vertebras and carrying them away, probably as trophies 

 of the chase, just as the modern huntsman prizes the brush 

 of a fox. The object of all these circumlocutionary details 

 is to show that the horse was hunted and dealt with, when 

 captured, precisely like other wild animals, such as the bear, 

 which has never yet been tamed, and that, consequently, the 

 animal was not then in a state of domestication. This 

 deduction seems to me to be founded on particularly sound 

 evidence ; but yet there is considerable difficulty in accept- 

 ing it as final. 



