are probably those belonging to a domesticated race. The antiquity of the horse in England is yet doubtful; and if we are to place any reliance on the results of researches in these barrows, we might conclude that horses were very rare, if not altogether unknown, during that period styled the stone age; but during the metallic period his remains are frequently met with.
Mr Bateman[1] concludes, from his researches among the most ancient burial-places, that he does not know in what light the primitive inhabitants of our country may have looked upon the horse, viewed as a creature of sufficient importance to be necessary for their use and happiness in a future state, but certain it is, that however rude and degraded this belief in another world may have been, the teeth, if not some of the bones, of horses have been found in primitive British tumuli, particularly those of Derbyshire; and which have no history but their strange contents.
Two Celtic graves opened in Yorkshire contained skeletons of horses; and in graves of the Anglo-Saxon period they have also been found.[2] The Hon. C. Neville, describing the remains found in a cemetery near Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, in 1851, remarks: 'Mention should here be made of an instance similar to one described by Sir Henry Dryden (Archæologia, vol. xxxiii.), viz.: the entire body of a horse, interred by the side of his rider, with a perfect iron bit still remaining on its head, and some small stud nails, with fragments of a leather head-stall.'[3]
