V] THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUITATION 489 



before the Christian era. It is most important that cheap sub- 

 stitutes be not taken for genuine survivals of a primitive type. 

 To the former category we may assign not only the block-wheels 

 of Borrowdale, Inverness, and Ireland, but also certain wheels 

 seen on Greek vases consisting of a felloe and two parallel 

 cross-pieces, crossed by another at right-angles (a variety in 

 which some have recognised the first step towards a spoked 

 wheel). To the same category I would likewise refer the 

 Portuguese wheels made out of a single piece of wood in which 

 two elliptical holes are cut, the wheel itself being clamped 

 with bands of iron. This wheel and others like it have been 

 supposed to be a first step towards a spoked wheel, but they are 

 rather to be regarded as cheap and clumsy substitutes, as are 

 also the solid wheels built up of three pieces of plank common 



FIG. 137. Coin of Messana. 



in Galicia, the Canaries and amongst the Zuni Indians in 

 Mexico, who have borrowed them from the Spaniards. These 

 wheels are regularly clamped together by iron bands, although 

 in Mexico they are said to be sometimes unshod. 



In all cases of solid wheels the wheel is fixed on the axle, 

 and does not revolve on it. Yet in the Florentine and Homeric 

 chariot the wheels play freely on the axle. It can therefore 

 hardly be maintained that we have genuine survivals of the 

 first stage in the evolution of the wheel in the Portuguese and 

 Spanish waggons with their revolving axles and wheels fixed to 

 the axle, for it is clear that the principle of the wheel revolving 

 on the axle has been known from an age far anterior to any 

 evidence of the existence of an ox-cart with solid wheels. 



But it is not in itself probable that solid wheels were evolved 

 at a date when iron was not yet known, and copper was com- 



