WILD TARPAN AND ITS RELATIONS 77 



are assigned to Hermann, and the untended horses 

 of an estate are not to be included in a bride's 

 outfit in all these cases we may suppose that 

 only fugitive horses are meant. So the animals 

 found in Pomerania by St. Otto, and in Prussia 

 by the Teutonic Knights, may have been in a 

 wild state, and yet the progeny of merely fugitive 

 mares ; and this becomes the more probable the 

 longer those regions had been the scene of war 

 and rapine." 



On the other hand, it should be borne in mind 

 that during the Stone Age Western Europe, as 

 already mentioned, was undoubtedly the home of 

 a small big-headed race of horse ; and nothing is 

 more likely than that herds of this or an allied race 

 should have survived in certain districts till a much 

 later epoch. As regards the argument that the 

 whole of Central Europe was a forest-clad region 

 during the Stone and Middle Ages, Dr. A. Nehring 1 

 has brought evidence to show that this is incorrect. 



After mentioning his belief that these small 

 Prehistoric horses were the ancestors of the modern 

 breeds of Western Europe, Dr. Nehring 2 proceeds 

 as follows : 



"The taming of the domesticated horse lasted, 

 in my opinion, into the later Stone Age, and during 

 that epoch there existed in Central and Western 



1 Ueber Tundren und Steppen, derjetzt- und Vorzett, Berlin, 1890. 



2 Ibid., p. 189. 



