Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 1 1 7 



ftretching into Mid Afia. Palaeontology {hews 

 that horfes once abounded in the New World, 

 but thofe which are now found there in a wild 

 ftate are all of them the defendants of the horfes 

 imported by the Spanim conquerors, the original 

 horfes of the country having everywhere died out 

 before the introduction of man into the Continent. 

 The aborigines, whom theSpani'fh found dwelling in 

 Mexico and Peru, had no tradition or hieroglyphic 

 indicative of fuch a quadruped, and the horfes 

 brought acrofs the Atlantic by the invaders were 

 viewed with aftonimment and alarm. 1 



At the fiege of Troy, Priam's horfes had been 

 reared at Abydos, which was famous for them. 

 Homer calls Ilios " blefled with good horfes," 

 and fpeaks of the " horfe-fubdui ng Trojans" as 

 if they were an equeftrian people. Myths con- 

 nected Troy with horfes from the beginning, in- 

 dicative, perhaps, of a Phoenician founder (juft as 

 the emblem of Carthage was a horfe 2 ), and thefe 

 legends have been very ufeful to the poets. Thus 

 Zeus gave Tros, the eponymus of Troy, divine 

 horfes in payment for his fon Ganymede, carried 

 off to be a celeftial cupbearer; and Hercules 

 refcued the daughter of Laomedon, Hefione, 

 from a fea-monfter fent by Pofeidon, on the faith 



1 Owen, "Hiftory of Britifh Foffil Mammals," p. 398 : " The 

 horfe in its ancient diftribution over both hemifpheres of the 

 globe refembled the maftodon, and appears to have become 

 extinfl in North America at the fame time with the m. , 

 and in South America with the megatherium." 



2 " Signum quod regia Juno 

 Monflrarat, caput acris equi." (" JEn.," i. 443.) 



