SOME FOREIGN BREEDS 137 



the latter, although there is every probability that 

 these features are the result of domestication. 



Dr. Hilzheimer is of opinion that this breed is 

 the descendant of the wild horses — whether abo- 

 riginally so or reverted to a wild condition from 

 domestication, is more or less immaterial — described 

 by Elisseus Rosslin as having inhabited the Vosges 

 at the end of the sixteenth century, and to which 

 reference is made in an earlier chapter.^ Moreover, 

 he considers the Schlettstadt breed as nearly related 

 to the horse of the Prehistoric Swiss lake-dwellings, 

 or Pfahlbauten ; and that the latter, to which some 

 writers have attributed an Eastern origin, was 

 itself the offspring of the still earlier wild horses of 

 the cave-epoch, such as the one represented in 

 plate vii. fig. 2. 



On the other hand, it is suggested that the 

 heavy so-called Eastern horse was not originally 

 tamed to the west of the Alps or in the north of 

 Europe, but that its ancestral home may have been 

 in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, whence it 

 was carried by the Romans to Central and Western 

 Europe. 



According to Dr. Conrad Keller,^ another 

 ancient breed is to be found in the island of 

 Majorca, in the Balearic group. These horses, 

 which are most abundant in the Palma district, differ 



* Supra, p. 74. 



* " Studien liber die Haustiere der Mittelmeer-Inseln," Neue 

 Denkschr. Schweiz. Naturfor. Gesellschaft, vol. xlvi. pp. 107-187, 191 1. 



