ORIGIN OF THE HORSE.
Animals and Plants under Domestication,
vol. i, page 51.
The history of the horse is lost in antiquity. Remains of this animal in a domesticated condition have been found in the Swiss lake-dwellings, belonging to the Neolithic period. At the present time the number of breeds is great, as may be seen by consulting any treatise on the horse. Looking only to the native ponies of Great Britain, those of the Shetland Isles, Wales, the New Forest, and Devonshire are distinguishable; and so it is, among other instances, with each separate island in the great Malay Archipelago. Some of the breeds present great differences in size, shape of ears, length of mane, proportions of the body, form of the withers and hind-quarters, and especially in the head. Compare the race-horse, dray-horse, and a Shetland pony in size, configuration, and disposition; and see how much greater the difference is than between the seven or eight other living species of the genus Equus.
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Page 52.
Horses have often been observed, according to M. Gaudry, to possess a trapezium and a rudiment of a fifth metacarpal bone, so that “one sees appearing by monstrosity, in the foot of the horse, structures which normally exist in the foot of the hipparion”—an allied and extinct animal. In various countries horn-like projections have been observed on the frontal bones of the horse: in one case described by Mr. Percival they arose about two inches above the orbital processes, and were “very like those in a calf from five to six months old,” being from half to three quarters of an inch in length.