II. 



THE HORSE IN SCOTLAND 



With flying forelock and dishevelled mane, 



They caught the wild steed prancing o'er the plain, 



For war or pastime reined his fiery force. 



"THE Horse in his Nature is as gentle and docile, as in 

 Appearance he is a noble, majestic and well-proportioned 

 Animal, but his peculiar Excellencies are determined by the 

 Service for which he is designed," wrote Dr John Campbell 

 in his Political Survey (1774), and therein he epitomizes 

 the influence of man, for he goes on to say, "We require 

 Horses for various Purposes, and to suit these they must 

 have various Properties, indeed so various, that what are 

 regarded as Excellencies, in some, would be Defects in 

 others." Our present problem lies in endeavouring to discover 

 in what ways in Scotland man has played upon the struc- 

 ture and nature of Horses for his own "various Purposes." 



THE HORSE NATIVE IN SCOTLAND 



It has often been taken for granted that the Horse, like the 

 Celtic Shorthorn and the Sheep, first made its appearance in 

 Scotland in the train of the herdsmen immigrants of the New 

 Stone Age; but long before man placed his foot in these 

 northern regions, their plains were the sporting grounds of 

 herds of wild native horses. Whether the primitive horses 

 whose remains have been found in the Forest Bed of Norfolk, 

 ever made their way to Scotland, it is impossible to say, for 

 the glaciers of the Ice Age have long since scoured away pos- 

 sible evidences of that highly probable invasion; but ten bones 

 of small horses were discovered during the cutting of a line 

 of railway near Crofthead in Renfrewshire, in a series of de- 

 posits five feet below a layer in which were found remains of 

 the Giant Fallow Deer or "Irish Elk " (Megaceros giganteus] 

 and of the Urus (Bos taurus primigenius}. There can be 



