browed modern ponies of the 'forest' type and the small horses represented in the 'Elephant Bed' at Brighton and in the Palaeolithic settlement at Solutré.
In addition to well-bred ponies under 13 hands at the withers, the auxiliaries who held the Border fort during the first century had 14 hands horses as fine in head and limbs as modern high-caste Arabs. The skull of one of these slender-limbed 14 hands horses is almost identical with the skull of an Arab mare (Jerboa, by Maidan out of Jerud) in the British Museum. That they closely agree is especially suggested by the frontal index.
In the 'steppe' or Prejvalsky type the face is so long and narrow that the frontal index[1] may be only 50, while in the 'forest' type (which, like the 'steppe' type, is characterised by long-pillared molars) the face is so short and broad that the frontal index may be over 60. But in a typical member of the 'plateau' type the frontal index is 54. In the Arab mare Jerboa the face has a length of 368 mm. and a width of 205 mm., hence the frontal index is 55.7; in the Newstead 'Arab,' the length of the face is 372 mm. and the width 201 mm., which gives an index of 54. This implies that in the first century, in a 14 hands horse of the 'Libyan' type, the head was as fine as in modern Arabs. It may be added that the fine-limbed 14 hands Newstead horse of the Libyan. type, though smaller, was built on the same lines as the thoroughbred 'Orlando,'[2] but decidedly differed in make from 'Stockwell,'[2] the grandson of the 'fiddle-headed' Echidna. The skulls and limb-bones already referred to show that the garrison of the Newstead Fort had in their possession (1) broad-browed big-boned ponies of the 'forest' or robustus type from 11 to 12.2 hands; (2) slender-limbed ponies of the ' Celtic' variety, of the 'plateau' type) from 11.2 to 12.2 hands, and 14 hands ponies of the ' Libyan' variety of the 'plateau' type built on the lines of the finer kinds of desert Arabs.
A second series of skulls point to the presence in Newstead of horses of the Equus stenonis or Equus sivalensis type, i.e. of horses with short-pillared molars, and the face forming an angle of from 150 to 180 with the cranium. In the account of the 'Siwalik and Narbudda Equidae,' Lydekker points out (1) that in Equus sivalensis 'the grinding surfaces of the anterior "pillars" of the premolars are not longer than those of the later true molars, and are frequently shorter than in the corresponding surface of the first true molar' (Fig. 60); (2) that in Equus caballus he had failed to 'discover any instances where the anterior "pillar" is as small as it frequently is in Equus sivalensis.'[3] Elsewhere Lydekker states that Equus stenonis is also characterised by short-pillared molars. Writing of the Forest Bed and Crag periods, Lydekker says 'In addition to
1 The frontal index is obtained by dividing the width across the orbits by the distance from the centre of a line connecting the supra-orbital foramina and the alveolar point which lies between the bases of the central incisors.
2 The skeleton of 'Orlando' is preserved in the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum, London; that of Stockwell is in the British Museum.
3 Indian Tertiary and Post-Tertiary Vertebrata, vol. ii. p. 88. 22, 1882.
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