326 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



camiise, the forehead large, the eye small but quick and in- 

 telligent, the neck of moderate length with a long fine mane, 

 the back short, the croup round and muscular, and well-rounded 

 sides, the tail set a little low, strong legs with large joints, 

 short pasterns. It is generally grey. The little Percherons 

 horse the Paris omnibuses and the French artiller}'. Various 

 theories have been advanced touching the origin of the Per- 

 cheron, some holding that he is an Arab become heavy under 

 a particular kind of work and feeding in the course of some 

 centuries, others consider him the outcome of the blending of 

 the Breton with the Boulonnais, whilst M. Sanson^ makes it 

 into a separate species, E. c. sequanius, and holds that it de- 

 veloped in the Parisian basin of the Seine (Sequana). MM. 

 Cuyer and Alix ^ accept this view, believing it to be confirmed 

 by the discovery at Grenelle of a skull of Equus caballus, the 

 only quaternary skull of Equidae known up to the time when 

 they were writing (1884), of which the typical characteristics 

 are those of the Percheron breed. Though it is possible that 

 this skull may be that of a cross between the ' Celtic ' pony and 

 the heavy built horse of the Solutre type, yet the grey colour of 

 the Percheron taken in conjunction with that of the Camargue, 

 and the same colour in the horses of Northern Spain, about 

 whose ancestry we are fairly certain, render it far more likely 

 that the Percheron is the outcome of blending the old heavy 

 European horse with Libyan blood derived through Spain 

 and Italy. 



There are also horses known as the large Percheron, but 

 they must not be confounded with the small or true Percheron, 

 for in the plain of Chartres there are horses of various other 

 breeds, some of them very large and heavy — Breton, Boulon- 

 nais, Flemish, Picard, Norman — but as the mode of rearing 

 tends to assimilate all these horses to the older breed, they are 

 commonly called Percherons and sold as such. 



It will be remembered that by 100 a.d. the German tribe of 

 Tencteri, who had settled on the left bank of the Rhine, were 

 distinguished from all other German tribes by their love of 



1 Zootechnie, Vol. iii. p. 105. . ^ Op. cit. p. 641. 



