fore 
THE HORSE AND HIS DISEASES. 
INTRODUCTION. 
THE PREHISTORIC HORSE. 
FOSSIL bones of the horse have been found in both hemispheres 
together with those of other animals which indicate an antiquity as 
great as any fossil quadruped. The relics found in Europe in the 
bone caves and drift deposits consist of innumerable skeletons as well 
as representations by drawing and carving on reindeer horn, bone and ivory, 
executed by their contemporary man countless ages before history began. 
Ecker says that the European horse of the fourth epoch probably gave birth 
to the small stunted breed with the large head, rounded forehead and short 
neck, which is found in fossil remains at Solutre and is still represented by 
the wild horses of the Rhone delta and the steppes of Russia; but he adds 
that this primitive breed was almost entirely supplanted by an Asiatic breed 
larger and more robust, and that our domestic horse is the result of a mixture 
of the two. The problem of the origin of the horse can no more be solved 
than that of man; unless we assume the unity of species, and that the Great 
Architect created each kind in a specific mould at the beginning, subject to 
the law of variation, limited by the power of reproduction each of its kind, 
that man, animals and plants had attained a degree of perfection in 
variety at some period or periods in the remote past, and that the process is 
now going on, slowly recovering from the great inundation which over- 
whelmed the earth during the glacial epoch. 
3 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
