134 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



The very first links in this chain are the remains of 

 the bronze age and those found among the ruins of the 

 ancient Swiss lake dwellings ; but earlier still than these 

 are the bones of horses found abundantly in northern 

 Europe, Asia, and America. The individual bones and 

 teeth of some of these horses are scarcely distinguishable 

 from those of to-day, a fact noted in the name, Equus 

 fraternus, applied to one species; and when teeth alone 

 are found, it is at times practically impossible to say 

 whether they belong to a fossil horse or to a modern 

 animal. But when enough scattered bones are gathered 

 to make a fairly complete skeleton, it becomes evident 

 that the fossil horse had a proportionately larger head 

 and smaller feet than his existing relative, and that he 

 was a little more like an ass or zebra, for the latter, spite 

 of his gay coat, is a near relative of the lowly ass. More- 

 over, primitive man made sketches of the primitive 

 horse, just as he did of the mammoth, and these indicate 

 that thq horse of those days was something like an 

 overgrown Shetland pony, low and heavily built, large- 

 headed and rough-coated. For the old cave-dwellers of 

 Europe were intimately acquainted with the prehistoric 

 horses, using them for food, as they did almost every 

 animal that fell beneath their flint arrows and stone 

 axes. And if one may judge from the abundance of 

 bones, the horses must have roamed about in bands, 

 just as the horses escaped from civilization roam, or 

 have roamed, over the pampas of South America and 

 the prairies of the West. 



The horse was just as abundant in North America in 

 Pleistocene time as in Europe ; but there is no evidence 

 to show that it was contemporary with early man in 

 North America, and, even were this the case, it is gen- 

 erally believed that long before the discovery of America 

 the horse had disappeared. And yet, so plentiful and so 



