CHAPTER ONE 



PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES 



THE paleontologists tell us that the rocks abound 

 with fossils which show that Equidae were numer- 

 ous all over America in the Eocene period. These 

 were the ancestors of the horse that was first do- 

 mesticated, and though there were millions of 

 them on the Continent of North America in the 

 period mentioned there were no horses here at all 

 when Columbus made his great discovery, and the 

 first explorers came to find out what this new In- 

 dia was like. The remains of the prehistoric 

 horse, when first found, baffled the naturalists, 

 and he was called by Richard Owen Hyracothe- 

 rium or Hyrax-like-Beast. The first fossils dis- 

 covered showed that the horse was millions and 

 millions of years ago under twenty-four inches in 

 stature, with a spreading foot and five toes. In his 

 development from this beginning the horse fur- 



