The Horse And Its Relatives
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HORSES AND PONIES OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS When Julius Caesar invaded Britain in the year 55 B.c. he found the natives in possession of swift and hardy horses, which they drove in their war- chariots with remarkable skill and adroitness. Although it has been stated that the horse is not indigenous to the British Islands,1 and the suggestion made that the original stock was introduced by the Phoenicians when they visited Cornwall for the purpose of obtaining tin, there seems no reason why the horses of the early Britains should not have been derived from the native Prehistoric breeds. The available evidence points to the conclusion that these early British horses were of small size, so that at the present day they would come under the denomination of ponies ; this being another fact in favour of t
...heir descent from the small Prehistoric horse allied to the tarpan. In the opinion of Sir Walter Gilbey,2 it is doubtful whether the horses of Britain gained materially in size till the Saxons and Danes imported stallions belonging to larger breeds from the Continent. 1 Sir Walter Gilbey, Thoroughbred and other Ponies, London, 1903, p. 21. 2 Op. at., p. 22. At the time when Domesday Book was written large droves of mares wandered at will through the forests of the great land-owners of England, and were only driven into enclosures occasionally when some of their number were selected for working purposes, and doubtless also for breeding. And it is probable that from these forest mares (the Equce silvestres or Equce indomitce of Domesday Book) were produced the first improved types of British horses. From the unimproved forest breeds are doubtless descended the modern forest and moorland breeds of ponies; which, it has been suggested, have somewhat degenerated in size an...
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