CHAPTER III 

 HORSES AND PONIES OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS 



WHEN Julius Caesar invaded Britain in the year 

 55 B.C. he found the natives in possession of swift 

 and hardy horses, which they drove in their war- 

 chariots with remarkable skill and adroitness. 

 Although it has been stated that the horse is not 

 indigenous to the British Islands, 1 and the sugges- 

 tion made that the original stock was introduced 

 by the Phoenicians when they visited Cornwall for 

 the purpose of obtaining tin, there seems no reason 

 why the horses of the early Britains should not 

 have been derived from the native Prehistoric 

 breeds. The available evidence points to the con- 

 clusion that these early British horses were of 

 small size, so that at the present day they would 

 come under the denomination of ponies ; this being 

 another fact in favour of their descent from the 

 small Prehistoric horse allied to the tarpan. In 

 the opinion of Sir Walter Gilbey, 2 it is doubtful 

 whether the horses of Britain gained materially 

 in size till the Saxons and Danes imported stallions 

 belonging to larger breeds from the Continent. 



1 Sir Walter Gilbey, Thoroughbred and other Ponies, London, 

 1903, p. 21, * Op. tit., p. 22. 



