76 INTRODUCTION. 



the wolf, and in America he has been known to 

 succumb under tlie beak of a condor. It is evident 

 that the difference in the relative conditions of the 

 two species, is, with regard to the ass, not entirely 

 referrible to human neglect and want of kindness, but 

 in part, at least, must be ascribed to inferior sensibility 

 and weaker intellectual power; both being alike 

 evinced by the hardness of his hide, by his satisfac- 

 tion with coarser food, and his passive stubbornness.* 

 We know, besides, so little of the social condi- 

 tion of the primitive seat of civilization, of the 

 original centi-e, whence knowledge radiated to China, 

 India, and Egypt, perhaps in Bactria, in the higher 

 valleys of the Oxus or in Cachmere, that it may 

 be surmised the first domestication of the horse Avas 

 achieved in Central Asia, or commenced nearly 

 simultaneously in several regions where the wild 

 animals of the horse form existed, and in point of 

 date, perhaps, even earlier than that of the ass, 

 whose natural habitat is more superficially extended 



* What Don UUoa says respecting wild asses in Peru, and 

 Molina of the same animals in Chili, are mere local accounts 

 of a few strayed animals that may have bred in independence 

 on the borders of the plantations, but they do not resume cha- 

 racteristics of vigilance, of liberty, and of voice, such as are so 

 beautifully depicted in the glowing images of the Hebrew pro- 

 phets and Arabian poets ; they are not noticed by later travel- 

 lers, and in no case appear in droves on the Pampas or troops 

 in the mountains, in a fixed feral state, like the horse. There 

 were feral asses, according to the Buccaneers, in St. Domingo 

 and other places ; yet though they ought to be the most vigi- 

 lant, the least sought, and the most inaccessible, they have 

 disappeared, while the feral horse still remains. 



