CHAPTER XIX 



THE HORSE EXTINCT HORSES FOSSIL HORSES 

 THE WILD HORSE 



The Horse Early History Fossilised Remains Sub-genus Equus 

 Asinus Evidence of the Existence of a South American Wild 

 Horse Ridgway on Horse Ancestry Wild Horses Pietrement 

 and Ridgway's Books on Horse History Classification of the 

 Equida Horses all from a Common Ancestry Prejevalsky's Wild 

 Horse Skeleton of the Domestic Horse, and Points of a Horse with 

 Explanations Jumping Records. 



THE early history of the horse is written only on the 

 pages of the rocks and of ancient deposits, if we 

 except the pictures of horses carved by " cave-dweller " 

 artists upon horns and antlers. Remains of the ancestor of 

 the domestic horse have been found in the Swiss lake- 

 dwellings, showing that it must not only have existed, but 

 have been of service to man at a very remote period. 

 Before the horse was captured and domesticated, he was 

 evidently used as a source of food, as in many palceo- 

 lithic stations the bones of the horse with those of the 

 reindeer have been found in quantity. In some of the bone 

 deposits in France as many as 20,000 to 40,000 skeletons are 

 represented in a single place. The primitive horse here 

 referred to was a diminutive animal of between thirteen and 

 fourteen hands high. (See a highly speculative but interesting 

 and suggestive paper on " The Multiple Origin of Horses 

 and Ponies " by Professor J. Cossar Ewart in the Transactions 

 of the Highland Society, 1904.) 



In North America fossilised remains exist of animals 

 resembling specimens of the Equidce. Ridgway * says : 

 " The lower Pleistocene of America exhibits a great variety 

 of races ranging in size from horses far more diminutive than 

 the smallest Shetland to those exceeding the very largest 



1 See Ridgway's Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse, pub- 

 lished by the University Press in the Cambridge Biological Series, 1905. 



