1909-10.] Restoration of an Ancient British Race of Horses. 291 
XIV. — The Restoration of an Ancient British Race of Horses. 
By J. 0. Ewart, F.R.S., University of Edinburgh. 
(Read December 20, 1909. MS. received January 12, 1910.) 
In a work published in 1846,* * * § Professor Owen figured two upper molars f 
of a small member of the Equidae family which lived in the south of 
England along with the mammoth. A study of these and other molars led 
Owen to conclude that the small equine which lived in England in pre- 
historic times was either an ass or a zebra. Assuming that the small 
Oreston fossil equine had “ callosities on the fore legs only, the tail furnished 
with a terminal brush, and a longitudinal dorsal line,” Owen gave it the 
name Asinus fossilis. In support of the view that a “ wild ass or quagga ” 
as well as a wild horse and a wild boar entered “ into the series of 
British Pliocene hoofed mammalia,” J Owen mentions that he had seen a 
fossil second phalanx or pastern bone of a small species of Equus about the 
size of the zebra from the Pliocene crag at Thorpe, and that Dr Mantell 
had described teeth and bones of “a small species about the size of a 
Shetland pony ” § from the super-cretaceous drift deposit at Brighton — 
the deposit which, owing to the abundance of mammoth bones, is known as 
the “ Elephant Bed.” 
I am unable to offer any opinion about the phalanx from Thorpe, but I 
am satisfied that there is no reason for assuming that the bones of the 
small species from the “ Elephant Bed ” belong either to an ass or a zebra. 
The small teeth referred to by Dr Mantell, like the cannon bones, indicate 
that the small equine of the “ Elephant Bed ” at Brighton was a horse 
about 12 hands high, allied to the stout race so abundant during the 
Mammoth age in the vicinity of Solutre. Evidence of this relationship is 
readily obtained by studying the cannon bones from Pleistocene deposits. 
In fossil, as in recent, Asiatic wild asses, the cannon bones are long and 
slender, the length of the metacarpal being at least eight times, and that of 
the metatarsal nine times, the width at the middle of the shaft. The small 
“ Elephant Bed ” cannon bones hitherto discovered are short and wide. A 
* A History of British Fossil Mammals ancl Birds , figs. 157 and 158, p. 396. 
t These molars (m. 2 and m. 3) were found in a cavernous fissure at Oreston near 
Plymouth. Similar molars came from the drift at Chatham and Kesingland in Suffolk. 
I Loc. cit ., p. xxiv. 
§ Medals of Creation , 1844, vol. ii. p. 40. 
