248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage : 

 Neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. 

 He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha ; 

 And he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the 

 captains, and the shouting." 



(Chapter xxxix, verses 22-25.) 



It was chiefly by reason of these two properties fleetness and cour- 

 age that the horse quickly became an animal without which history 

 would seem barren enough. Without the horse neither the expedi- 

 tions of an Alexander, nor a migration of tribes, nor a Christian knight- 

 hood, would have been possible ; in a word, without the horse, all those 

 mighty movements which have shaken the world and have stirred the 

 very foundations thereof, could never have been thought of ; and the 

 people, sitting still and silent upon the ground, would never have left 

 their accustomed boundaries to go forth fighting and colonizing from 

 land to land. 



Happily the horse possessed still other important properties which 

 rendered possible its emj)loyment in other than warlike uses. Chief 

 among these properties are its sagacity, endurance, and fidelity. 

 When, therefore, war was no longer the chief employment of Euro- 

 peans, and agriculture had taken its place, man soon thought of em- 

 ploying the horse as a draught-animal as he in like manner had hith- 

 erto used the cow. Then did the horse become, for the first time, of 

 real use to culture, and a leading actor in it. Such had not been the 

 case in Asia up to this time. The ox had drawn the plow and wagon 

 but lazily and slowly, and agriculture had made slow progress ; but 

 with the horse came a new impulse, a higher purpose in this occupa- 

 tion, which made it an important and valuable one. Even to this 

 time the horse, by reason of his excellent properties, is regarded as the 

 truest companion and aid of man in all the operations as well of war 

 as of agriculture. Neither is this noble animal to be forgotten in com- 

 merce and trade, nor in art ; in a word, it is the most valuable and 

 therefore the best treated domestic animal which Europe has to ex- 

 hibit. 



Besides the horse, some other animals, which in the pastoral time 

 had not yet entered Europe, soon made their appearance. They were 

 the ass, with its near relative the mule, and the goat. All these wan- 

 dered, as did the vine, fig, and olive, from Asia Minor and Syria to 

 Greece ; and, strange as it may seem, the mule preceded the ass, whose 

 original home may after all have to be sought for in Africa. Both 

 spread at a later date from Greece into the same regions in which the 

 vine and the olive found their way, and for a time did not pass beyond 

 these regions. For, notwithstanding their patience and contentment, 

 by virtue of which they are satisfied with the most wretched food, 

 they did not find the climate in Northern Europe a hospitable one for 

 them, and are both still really strangers there. 



