INTRODUCTION. 97 



carried them to their African colonies, to Crete, 

 Sicily, Spain, and Greece. Thus it may have been 

 that, in their allegorical poems, Helenic fabulists 

 represented Neptune striking the earth with his 

 trident, and, producing the horse, distributed the 

 species to gods and heroes. Similar opinions are 

 held in modern times by the Circassians, who 

 deem the Shalokh steeds, the noblest of Kabarda 

 horses, to be sprung from the sea ; probably because 

 tlie parent stock was imported by water. 



Recent authors have endeavoured to maintain, 

 with still less appearance of reason even than Buf- 

 fon s opinion concerning the original location of the 

 domestic horse, that Arabia had no horses in the 

 early ages, nor during the Roman empire, and 

 scarcely any at the date of the hejira. In support 

 of this opinion we are told, that, in the second cen- 

 tury, horses were sent a present to the reigning 

 princes of that country; that in the fourth, two 

 hundred Cappadocian steeds were again forwarded 

 by the Roman emperor to the same region ; and in 

 the seventh, when Mohammed in person attacked 

 the Koreish, that he had but two of these animals 

 in his army; finally, that not a single horse was 

 captured by him in his sanguinary and victorious 

 campaign. * Without disputing the facts, we may 

 nevertheless refer to what has already been said in 

 the foregoing pages, to show the condition of the 



* See the Horse, *•' Library of Useful Knowledge," 8vo. 1831 ; 

 a book we have consulted with great interest, and invaluable 

 in many particulars : its humane tendency is above all praise. 



G 



