His early History. 3 



of the same blood from the chivalrous Normans. So 

 was it with the horse. Arabian blood had been intro- 

 duced from time to time ; horses and mares described 

 as Barbs and Turks, more or less of Arabian descent, 

 had been freely used, and a great change had been 

 wrought in the native horse. Then came the Darley 

 Arabian, whose son, Flying Childers, is the best-bred 

 horse to be found in the Stud Book. 



Although it may not be of much consequence to 

 speculate upon the type of horse Caesar found in Bri- 

 tain, it would still be deeply interesting to inquire 

 whether the earliest inhabitants of Northern and West- 

 ern Europe, the Kimmerians and the Kelts, were po.s- 

 sessed of horses ; whether the Kumry brought the horse 

 with them from the Bosphorus across the wilds of Europe 

 to the Kimbric Chersonese; whether the horse was brought 

 into Britain by one of the first three immigrations of the 

 Kumry, or by the later ones of the Belgae, offshoots from 

 the Germans, belonging to the second great tide of popu- 

 lation which overran Europe from Asia, and whom we 

 know were possessed of horses in immense numbers. 

 One thing we know : that the horse did not precede 

 man as an inhabitant of these isles, as, when Hu Cadarn, 

 ' the strong or mighty,' led over the first migration of the 

 Kumry, before him there were no inhabitants in Britain, 

 and the country was occupied only by bears, wolves, 

 beavers, and oxen with large protuberances, similar or 

 identical with the denizens of the great Hyrcinian 

 Forest, After Caesar's time, and during the Roman 

 occupation, it has been suggested, and with much pro- 



