PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



Cmtfkitrjj£ IB^iksnp^iral fs&aatty. 



The Origin of the Thorough-bred Horse. By Professor Ridge- 

 way (communicated by A. E. Shipley). 



[Read 24 November 1902.] 



The author said that he had shown (Academy, Jan., 1891, 

 p. 91) that not only, as had been long observed, did the Homeric 

 Greek drive the horse before they rode him, but that the same 

 was true of all ancient peoples — Egyptians, Canaanites, Assyrians, 

 Aryans of Rig- Veda, Umbrians, Celts, — and that the explanation 

 of this was given by Herodotus (v. 9), who in speaking of the 

 Sigynnae, the only tribe north of the Danube whose name he 

 knew, said that they had small horses, with large flat noses, and 

 very long hair, which though not able to carry a man, were 

 excellent under chariots : " wherefore they used chariots." Dio 

 Cassius likewise says that the Britons used chariots in war, be- 

 cause their horses were " small, though active." The description 

 of the horses of the Sigynnae tallies exactly with the abundant 

 remains of the primitive horse of Europe, eaten in great quantities 

 and delineated on antlers by the men of the Stone Age. He was 

 a small animal about 10 hands high with a big head. Even 

 after domestication he remained very small, as witness bits of 

 bronze and horn found in Swiss Lake-dwellings, the shoes found 

 at Silchester, and in camps on the Roman Wall, etc. Authorities 

 are agreed that from this primitive horse has been developed the 

 cart-horses of the Continent and these islands, whilst our blood- 

 horses have come from an Eastern stock of slight build and 

 smart appearance. Our problem is to ascertain the original 

 habitat of this superior horse. He has not come from Upper 

 Asia, as the Mongolian pony is taken as the type of the coarse, 



VOL. XII. PT. III. 10 



