346 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



selection. They are bred only in two colours black and white. 

 The Austrians regard them as the finest and handsomest type 

 of carriage horse in the world, though their trotting speed is 

 limited to two or three miles an hour 1 . 



The Lippizaner horses, bred at Lippiza near Trieste, are 

 chiefly of Eastern origin. Their proper colour is grey, which is 

 now more or less varied, owing to crosses with English half- 

 breds/ which have unfortunately altered the former type a good 

 deal. They are generally not over lo'l hands. They are 

 greatly used in the imperial stables, and in some parts of 

 Austria, as carriage horses, not being well adapted for the 

 saddle. 



The Pinzgauer, so called from Pinzgau in Styria, are 

 Friesland in origin, and they are used as draught-horses all 

 over the Austrian empire. Their typical colour is red-roan 

 with characteristic bay spots on the haunches : " they resemble 

 Suffolk Punches by their shape and by the absence of long hair 

 below the knees and hocks. They stand about 16'2 hands 

 high 2 /' 



It is now clear that all the good breeds of Germany, the 

 Low Countries, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria, whether 

 they be heavy, light, or intermediate, all owe their superiority 

 to the fact that they are either almost wholly derived (like the 

 Wiirtemburg, and Trakehnen) from Libyan ancestry, or else 

 have that blood in their veins in varying degrees, due account 

 being also taken of the condition of climate and soil under 

 which certain breeds have long lived. 



We saw at an earlier stage that the horses of Scandinavia, 

 at the date when Beowulf was composed, were dun, apple-dun, 

 and white, that in the list of gods Heimdal rode on a yellow- 

 maned horse, Odin on his grey steed, eight-legged Sleipnir 

 (Fig. 100), whilst in the later list of horses names such as Hrafn 

 (raven) and Soti (sooty) occur, showing that black horses had 

 by that time come into the possession of the northern peoples. 

 That such horses were obtained from the countries lying south 

 of the Baltic we can have no doubt after the evidence for the 

 origin of black horses which we have passed in review. But 

 1 Hayes, op. cit. pp. 526-7. 2 Hayes, op. cit. pp. 527-9. 



