THE EQUID^E, OR HORSES. 219 



almost as if it had been formed contrary to nature, 

 and yet the artist has, in reality, given us a pri- 

 meval horse, whether he saw it with his own eyes 

 or conceived it in his mind ; to us, at all events, 

 the animal seems depicted in the spirit of the 

 highest form of poetry and reality.' 



The horse, in all its various forms of develop- 

 ment, from the dwarfish pony to the Percheron 

 and the huge English cart horse, has been regarded 

 as a single species ever since it was found in the 

 service of man. We talk only of different races 

 of Equus caballus. The taming and breeding of 

 horses may be said certainly not to have taken 

 place for thousands of years after the time when 

 man first came into contact with the animal. The 

 period during which prehistoric Man, in Europe, 

 fed chiefly upon horse flesh is that which has also 

 been called the Eeindeer period, owing to the wide 

 distribution of that animal. This division of time 

 follows the period of the fullest development of the 

 mammoth, and was in many localities e.g. in 

 Central France extremely favourable for the in- 

 crease of the genus Horse, in spite of an evidently 

 rough climate. Nowhere in the world are such 

 accumulations of remains found as near Solutre in 

 the neighbourhood of Macon to the north of Lyons. 



