WAS THE HORSE INDIGENOUS TO AMERICA ? 
317 
are a great hindrance to skilful surgery on the lower animals. No 
impartial man can deny that these great advantages outweigh a 
hundred fold any slight trouble and expense connected with the 
use of anaesthetics. May the time come in the veterinary 
profession when it will be the rule an'd not the exception to 
make use of the means at our command for the control of pain, 
and then the reproach can no longer be hurled at us, that we 
are indifferent to the suffering we inflict on our dumb patients. 
[Written Specially for the Ame.rican Veterinary Review.] 
WAS THE HORSE INDIGENOUS TO AMERICA ? 
By W. J. Martin, V. S., Kankakee, III. 
From excavations recently made in a shell mound on Dau¬ 
phins Isle, in Mobile Bay, there have been found many relics of 
the handiwork of prehistoric man that are of much interest to 
science. Among these relics may be mentioned a rude carving 
on stone which represents in outline the head and neck of a 
horse minus the ears. It has been claimed for these relics that 
they were the work of a race of people who built the shell mounds 
that are to be found scattered along the shores of Mobile Bay 
and the St. Johns River, in Florida. It is also asserted by many 
eminent archaeologists that these people inhabited the southern 
portion of the American continent long before the people known 
as the mound builders came into the central and northern parts 
of the country. 
If this find is authentic, and there seems to be no reasonable 
doubt that it is, as the name of the owner of the relics is given, 
it bears out in a remarkable manner the idea long entertained 
by me, that the horse was an inhabitant of the interior of this 
country at the time of its discovery by Columbus. We know 
from the study of paleontology, that the horse existed in immense 
herds on the plains of both North and South America long be¬ 
fore the countries were discovered by the European race. So 
great indeed, was the period of time which the horse had been 
an inhabitant of this country, that we find its bones covered over 
