ON SKULLS OF HORSES FROM THE ROMAN FORT AT NEWSTEAD. 571 



the Steppe type — reached Iceland through the Hebrides during the ninth and tenth 

 centuries, one can understand why a small percentage of the modern horses of Iceland 

 have a more or less distinct trace of the large-headed Steppe variety. 



If the three small Newstead skulls belonged to native British ponies, they afford 

 further evidence in support of the view that the small active British horses which 

 attracted the attention of Caesar were either Celtic ponies pure and simple or a blend 

 of the Celtic and Forest varieties ; and being, except in size, almost identical with the 

 finer kinds of Arabs, they help us to realise more fully the make of the horses that 

 occurred in Switzerland during the La Tene period, and of the small, fleet, flat-nosed 

 horses the Sigynnse of Central Europe drove in their war-chariots during the fifth 

 century B.C. Further support of the view that the small horses in the Roman fort 

 at Newstead were British is afforded by the study of the bones of the limbs. More can 

 usually be learned as to the variety to which any given horse belongs from the meta- 

 carpals or metatarsals than from the teeth. In the Forest type the length of the 

 metacarpal is from 5 '25 to 575 times the width at the centre of the shaft, whereas in 

 the Steppe and Plateau types the length is from 7*25 to 775 times the width. The 

 smallest metacarpals from Newstead are in length 7*5 times the width. The smallest 

 Newstead metacarpals very closely agree with the metacarpals of Hebridean and Iceland 

 ponies of the Celtic type and with metacarpals from the Romano-British town of 

 Silchester. In the Forest type the metatarsals are in length from 6*6 to 7*2 times the 

 width of the shaft, while in the Plateau type they may be over nine times the width 

 of the shaft. In a metatarsal (British Museum) of Neolithic age from Walthamstow, 

 Essex, the shaft is in length 8*8 times the width. In a Newstead metatarsal the length 

 is 9 '5 times the width of the shaft. It may hence be assumed that the small horses in 

 the Newstead fort closely resembled horses which lived in Essex during Neolithic times. 



If Dio Cassius and other writers are accurate in their accounts of the horses of the 

 Caledonian and other Northern tribes, the large skulls from Newstead must belong 

 either to horses that had been imported from the Continent or to large breeds that had 

 been recently established in South Britain. 



Assuming that the larger varieties had been imported, after full consideration I 

 arrived at the conclusion that the long-headed horses of the Steppe type had come 

 from either Germany or Spain ; that the broad-headed horses of the Forest type had in 

 all probability come from the Low Countries ; that the narrow-headed horses of the 

 Arab type might have come from Spain or the south of France, and that the majority 

 of the cross-bred animals had come from the north of France. 



That the coarse-headed horses in Newstead during the first and second centuries 

 (a.d.) came from Germany, is suggested by Cesar's saying that "foreign horses in 

 which the Gauls take special delight, and for which they pay large sums, the Germans 

 do not employ ; but their own native horses which are bad and ugly, they train to 

 endure the severest toil by daily exercise." 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. XLV. PART III. (NO. 20). 80 



