220 



ASS. 





world gives thorn some little to begin with. Such 

 persons are necessarily without many of the whole- 

 some restraints of regular society ; and, which is of 

 far more importance, though but too often overlooked, 

 they are without the incentives to virtue, which are 

 the more pleasing results of an .orderly society. They 

 are thus led, or perhaps it is more correct to say 

 driven, to associate with each other ; and it seems to 

 be the nature of society to be progressive, whether 

 in the gaining of character or the losing of it. Now 

 it is chiefly to such persons and such societies that 

 the ass belongs ; and therefore he suffers, not only by 

 the treatment which he receives from his owners, but 

 from the opinion which, right or wrong, the world 1 

 has of them. There is, of course, no moral, and 

 except what has been stated, no social necessity, why j 

 a man who possesses, or rides, or drives an ass, should 

 either be a man of rough character, or one who will 

 treat the animal with cruelty ; but the fact is so 

 general, that very unequivocal proofs are necessary 

 to restrain suspicion, even when there is not other- 

 wise the least ground for suspecting. 



These observations may, at first sight, seem to 

 have more connection with the civil history of men 

 than with the natural history of asses ; but as we 

 form our opinion of the animals from the condition 

 in which we find them, it is necessary to show how 

 they come into that condition, and that it is neither 

 natural to them nor in any way their fault. It is 

 true, that even the warmest part of England, even 

 with the best treatment, is too cold for the full deve- 

 lopment of the natural appearance and character of 

 the ass ; and that, as the latitude increases, the adapt- 

 ation becomes worse. But the effects of climate 

 would not alone produce that diminution of the sta- 

 ture and deterioration of appearance which he has in 

 England, as compared with the south of Europe and 

 the isles in the Mediterranean. The contrast between 

 the Maltese ass and the English ass is, in some re- 

 spects, greater than that between the Arabian horse 

 and the Shetland pony. (See engraving.) The bodily 

 distinction is not so great, certainly ; but that of the 

 spirit of the animals is much greater. The pony 

 is small in size and shaggy in covering ; but there 

 is still fire in his eye and mettle in his limbs ; and 

 small as he is, he is still " every inch a horse." The 

 ass, on the contrary, is more dispirited than dwarfed, 

 although the latter also is considerable. 



Maltese and Common Ass. 



How much, or whether any of the deterioration of 

 the ass, in point of spirit, depends upon the circum- 

 stance about to be stated, has not been investigated ; 



and, indeed, so far as the writer of this article in 

 aware, the question, though it is a curious, and no 

 doubt might prove to be an important one, has never 

 been once mentioned by any one writer on natural 

 history. The point is this, the ass remains far more 

 stubbornly true to its normal type than the horse. 

 The ass, in fact, breaks less into varieties, even vari- 

 eties of colour, than any other domesticated animal. 

 There is some reason to believe that it Svas domesti- 

 cated at an earlier period of human history than the 

 horse ; and there is no reason to suppose that its 

 domestication took place later. The Bible is certainly 

 the oldest authentic history that we have ; and it 

 shows that in ancient times the ass was the general, 

 if not. the universal saddle animal for all who could 

 afford to ride ; and that the horse was used, if not 

 exclusively, yet generally for warlike purposes only. 

 It is not our object to institute an inquiry into the 

 history of either animal in a domesticated state, or 

 to trace the means or mode of their distribution from 

 the central parts of Asia, of which it is probable that 

 both are natives, to the several parts of the civilised 

 world, and till the horse, at least, has become wild in 

 the plains of South America, and the hybrid progeny 

 of the two has become the great beast of burden, in 

 the difficult and dangerous parses of the Andes. It 

 is sufficient for our purpose to know that the domes- 

 tication of the ass is, at least, not later than that, of the 

 horse ; and that point admits of no dispute or question. 



Now the horse has broken into innumerable 

 varieties, not of colour merely, but of size, shape, and 

 spirit ; so that, not only has each country its peculiar 

 horse, distinct, and well known to all who are 

 acquainted with the character and points of the 

 animal, but each small district, nay each kind of 

 employer of horses has a marked variety. This is so 

 palpably the case, that even the most common 

 observer in the streets of London, who knows nothing 

 about the economy of horses, or the preservation of 

 the variety by " breeding in and in," or the change 

 of it by " crossing," can at once distinguish a brewer's 

 horse, a coal-merchant's horse, a carrier's horse, a 

 farmer's horse, and so of all the horses which are 

 regularly employed in a particular way, and bred for 

 that employment. In all these, again, there are 

 subordinate varieties, in colour, size, and various 

 other respects ; so that the horse appears particularly 

 pliable to circumstances, whether of climate or of 

 treatment. Many other domesticated animals, the 

 ox, for instance, do the same, but none perhaps so 

 readily, or tc the same extent, as the horse. 



But the ass shows no such varieties. There are 

 trifling changes in the shade of its colour, and some 

 individuals are nearly white ; but the last are, from 

 the red colour of their eyes, obviously albinos, and 

 in the other cases, it is a simple change of shade in 

 the colour, and not a breaking by the introduction of 

 a new one. We do not find pied asses, or asses with 

 a white blaze in the forehead, or white feet, neither 

 do we find them dappled ; at least if there are any 

 such instances they are exceedingly rare. They also 

 retain the mesial line on the back, and the transverse 

 band which forms the cross upon the shoulders. Its 

 coat may be sleek or it may be shaggy, according to 

 the climate to which it is exposed and the treatment 

 with which it meets ; but it so preserves even its 

 external specific characters, that it every where 

 seems the very same ass, without the least tendency 

 to variety. It is highly probable that the diminished 



