94 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



Sir R. Owen estimated the shoulder-height of the 

 Bruniquel horse for which, ignoring the earlier 

 names quoted above, he proposed the designation 

 Equus spelceus at about 1 3 J hands, or 4^ feet. 



Now it can scarcely be doubted that this small 

 Bruniquel Prehistoric horse was identical with the 

 small big-headed horse drawn on horn by the Stone 

 Age men of La Madelaine, in the department of 

 Dordogne (pi. vii. fig. 2), and the name E. spelczus 

 will therefore be applicable to both. 



The bones and teeth of horses from the super- 

 ficial formations of the Continent and Great Britain 

 indicate, however, great differences in the bodily 

 size of the animals to which they belonged ; and 

 it has, therefore, been inferred that there were 

 several distinct types of wild horses during the 

 Stone Age. The evolution and differentiation of 

 these types, it has been suggested, may have been 

 due to the disappearance of the open tundras and 

 steppes of Central Europe, and their replacement by 

 forest, in consequence of which some of the wild 

 horses took to a partially forest-life, which would lead 

 to the development of a heavy and massive type of 

 limb, while others, again, frequented the borders of 

 deserts, where, it may be, they could exist only by 

 the aid of man's cultivation of the soil in the oases. 



From the study of remains obtained from Anau, 

 in Turkestan, Dr. J. U. Duerst 1 considers that 



1 In R. Pumpelly's Explorations in Turkestan, vol. ii. p. 309; 

 Washington, Carnegie Institute, 1908. 



