PERHAPS rSTDIGENOTIS TO BEITAIN. 2T 



swifter even than the domesticated horse, and are usually taken 

 by traps set in the sand. Mr. Bruce, however, doubts whether 

 any wild horses are now found in Arabia Deserta." * 



In Central Africa, however, wild horses still roam untamed, 

 far to the southward of the great desert of Sahara, in the coun- 

 try of Ludamar, where they were seen by Mungo Park in great 

 droves. From that district there extends a range of fertile, 

 well-watered, grassy, and in part wooded country, to Nubia 

 and Upper Abyssinia, whence, in my opinion, the horse was 

 first introduced into Egypt, and thence into Arabia, Europe and 

 the East. 



Fossil remains of the horse have beei) discovered, of extreme 

 antiquity, in some of the oldest formations in Great Britain. In 

 the Kirkdale cave, in Yorkshire, the bones of this animal are 

 mingled with those of the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, bison, deer, 

 tiger, hyaena, and other beasts of prey ; and from the absence 

 of human remains, as well as from the condition of the bones 

 and the abundance of fossil excrements of the hysena, it is the 

 opinion of Dr. Bucklaud, that England was not peopled at the 

 period when this remarkable cavity of the earth was filled, 

 and its predatory inhabitants submerged, with the relics of 

 their prey, by the rising waters of some local or general inun- 

 dation. 



It«certainly cannot be regarded as a proof that the English 

 horse is, in any part of its blood, still autochthonous or abori- 

 ginal, that such fossil remains are found there ; any more than 

 it is of the wild horse of the American Pampas or Prairies. 



It is, however, observable, that at the period of the first 

 Boman invasion, the horse was domesticated in Britain ; and 

 not only domesticated, but so numerically abundant, that a large 

 portion of the forces, which resisted the invaders, were chariot- 

 eers and cavalry. So much so, that when Cassivelan discharged 

 his tumultuary army, as unable to resist the legions in the field, 

 he retained a picked body of four thousand war chariots, where- 

 with to impede the movements, and cut up the foragers of 

 Csesar. 



And this being the first introduction of the British isles into 



* Touatt on the Horse, 11. 



