OUR SERVANTS OF STABLE AND HARNESS. 119 



countries for his patience, endurance, and his ability to 

 bear burdens and serve man in the craggy and steep 

 mountain-defiles where horses can not go. Both he and 

 his near relative, the mule, tough, nimble-footed, and 

 docile, are more and more taking the place of the clumsy 

 ox, and the more sensitive horse. 



3. The zebra, whose home is in Africa, possesses most 

 of the peculiar characteristics of the horse, but his wild 

 nature never sufficiently yields to taming influences to 

 make him a faithful servant. His quick and long sight, 

 enabling him to discover approaching danger at a great 

 distance, renders his capture very difficult. His beauty 

 of form and color makes him an attractive object in the 

 show and the zoological garden. 



4-. " By his physical structure," says " Chambers's Mis- 

 cellany," "the horse is fitted for dry, open plains that 

 yield a short, sweet herbage. His hoof is not adapted to 

 the swamp ; and though he may occasionally be seen 

 browsing on tender shoots, yet he could subsist neither in 

 the jungle nor in the forest. His lips and teeth, however, 

 are admirably formed for cropping the shortest grass, and 

 thus he luxuriates where many other herbivorous animals 

 would starve, provided he be supplied with water, of 

 which he is at all times a liberal drinker. He can not 

 crush his food like the hippopotamus, nor does he rumi- 

 nate like the ox ; but he grinds the herbage with a pecul- 

 iar lateral motion of the jaw which looks not unlike the 

 action of the millstone. 



5. " There is doubt expressed as to the original locality 

 of the horse. The wild breeds of America are looked 

 upon as the descendants of Spanish breeds imported by 

 the first conquerors of that continent ; those of the Ukraine 

 in Europe are said to be the progeny of Russian horses 

 abandoned after the siege of Azof, in 1696 ; and those of 



