392 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



These three skulls (now in the National Museum in Dublin) 

 were found associated with various antiquities, the character 

 of which has led Mr George Coffey, the keeper of the National 

 Museum of Irish Antiquities, to date the deposit as not later 

 than the tenth century and possibly as early as the sixth 

 century A.D. Dr Scharff, the head of the department of the 

 Irish National Museum of Natural History, has pointed out to 

 me that the skulls, which are beautifully preserved, have the 

 distinctive features of the Arab, i.e. North African horse. 



The various kinds of evidence here adduced put it beyond 

 doubt that at a period long anterior to the supposed intro- 

 duction of Spanish stallions into Ireland in Tudor times that 

 country already possessed a breed of horses closely related to 

 the North African. 



The question now arises, Is the typical Irish horse an in- 

 digenous development from an Equus caballus celticus or from 

 E. c. europeus typicus or from both, or is it the outcome of a 

 very early and oft-repeated admixture of North African blood 

 with that of the old European horses, whether an E. c. celticus 

 or E. c. typicus, or with both ? 



Both Col. St Quentin and Sir Walter Gilbey hold that the 

 superiority of the Irish horses over all others is due largely to 

 the limestone formation of the great central plain of Ireland 

 and the excellence of the pasturage, but probably neither of 

 these writers would maintain that the present Irish horse could 

 have been evolved either out of the typical Great Horse of the 

 Continent and England in the lapse of some centuries, or from 

 the ancient horses of Upper Europe without any blending of 

 other blood. Indeed the very value attached to ' blood ' by 

 Col. St Quentin, when writing of the Irish horse, shows that 

 he, like Mr Kenny, Dr Cox, and the members of the Royal 

 Commission, believes that the Irish horses have in their veins 

 a very large proportion of Arab, i.e. North African blood. It 

 will therefore be hardly asserted by anyone that the Irish 

 Hobbie of the time of Thomas Blundeville had been specialized 

 merely under favourable conditions of soil and climate from the 

 heavy-headed, thick-set horses of Europe and Asia, especially in 

 view of the three skulls from a lake-dwelling just cited, which 



