ANCIENT METHODS OF USING THE HORSE. 17 



larg and coarse head, a high crest, and a heavy, lumbering body, 

 not \ery dissiniihir to the Flemish horse of the nineteenth century. 

 Of the Libyan, Numidian, and Moorish horses, which are 

 alluded to by classic writers, we know little beyond the cursory 

 description of ^lian, who says that they were slenderly made, 

 and carried no flesh. 



THE ORIGINAL BRITISH HORSE. 



The nature of the original stock which formed the found- 

 ation of the modern European horse is" extremely doubtful. In 

 Great Britain horses' bones are found in caves which are of ex- 

 treme antiquity, but they do not define with any certainty the 

 form of the original British horse, nor can we, with certainty, 

 arrive at the exact era at which the animals to which they be- 

 longed lived and died. It is, however, an ascertained fact that 

 when the Romans invaded Great Britain they found the people in 

 possession of horses, and using them for their chariots as well as 

 for the purposes of riding. After the irruption of the Goths, and 

 the commencement of the dark ages, we have no reliable history 

 to guide us, and we are left to grope in the dark from the fourth 

 century, when Vegetius wrote on the veterinary art, until the 

 time of the Stuarts, when attention was first paid to the improve- 

 ment of the breed of horses in this country. 



ANCIENT METHODS OF USING THE HORSE. 



The mode of using the horse adopted by the ancients was at 

 first by harnessing him to a rude chariot, without springs. In 

 course of time, the grooms who took care of him found that they 

 could manage him while on his back without the aid of the saddle 

 and bridle, which are comparatively modern inventions. Hence, 

 we see the horse represented in the Elgin marbles as ridden with- 

 out either the one or the other ; and there is also abundant written 

 testimony in support of this mode of equitation being practised by 

 the early Greeks. This ingenious people, however, invented the 

 snaffle-bridle, and both rode and drove with its aid, after the estab- 

 lishment of the Olympian games, in which chariot races formed an 

 essential feature. The curb-bit was invented by the Romans, or, 

 at all events, was first used by them ; but both that people and the 

 Greeks were ignorant of the use of the stirrup, and either vaulted 

 on their horses, or used the back of a slave as a stepping-stone, or 

 sometimes had recourse to a short ladder for the purpose. The 

 earliest period when it can be proved that the stirrup was in use 

 was in the time of the Norman invasion of this country. The 

 incidents of this event in history were recorded on the Bayeux 

 tapestry by the wife of William the Conqueror, and on this the 

 stirrup was depicted, according to the authority of Berenger, as a 

 2* B 



