22 
Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
The Horse in Norway. By Francis H. A. Marshall, 
M.A. (Cantab.), D.Sc. (Edin.), Carnegie Fellow and Lecturer 
on the Physiology of Reproduction in the University of 
Edinburgh. (With Two Plates.) 
(Read November 6, 1905.) 
Writers on the origin of the horse and its different breeds 
have been accustomed to refer to the horses of Norway as though 
they belonged to a single type. Thus Sanson, in his Zootechnie , 
includes the horses and ponies of that country in his sub-species 
Equus caballus hibernicus, to which he also refers the various 
ponies of the British Isles, the Breton in France, and the horses 
of Iceland and Sweden. The late Captain Maurice Hayes, in his 
well-known work on the Points of the Horse , refers collectively to 
Norwegian and Swedish horses as though they belonged to one 
natural group. Professor Ewart, in describing a typical repre- 
sentative of what he calls the Forest type, which, as he shows, 
differs essentially from the newly discovered “ Celtic pony,” 
alludes provisionally to the former as the “Norse horse,” because 
it is common in Norway. Moreover, Professor Ridgeway, in his 
recently published book on the Origin and Influence of the 
Thoroughbred Horse , appears to regard the Norse horse as repre- 
senting a single type which has undergone greater or less alteration 
through the introduction of Libyan or other foreign blood. 
As a result of a recent visit to Norway, during which I did 
not neglect opportunities for studying the native breeds of horses 
and ponies and their history, it has become evident to me — what 
indeed is well recognised by all horse-breeders in that country — 
that the Norwegian horses at the present day belong to two quite 
distinct types, which, howmver, have intermixed to a considerable 
extent. These two types are represented by the “pure” fjord 
horse * and the Gudbrandsdal horse. 
* It is doubtful whether any of the existing fjord horses are really pure, 
i.e. unaltered by admixture of Gudbrandsdal or foreign blood. 
