HORSE. 



773 



adapted for any of these a railway must be an effec- 

 tive cutting off of the country from the towns, and of 

 the towns from each other. This is, no doubt, in a 

 great measure an imaginary evil, because it is one 

 which the country will not permit, inasmuch as folks 

 will continue to ride horses and drive carriages from 

 one end of the country to another, despite of all the 

 railroads that can be constructed. It is proper, how- 

 ever, that people generally should have a right un- 

 derstanding of the value of the horse, not merely as 

 a working animal, but in the effect which it has upon 

 the general productiveness and general value of the 

 country ; and it would be just as well if, when such a 

 project as a railroad is under consideration by the 

 legislature, some of those who profess so warm a j 

 zeal for the interests of agriculture would broach this j 

 subject, were it only for the purpose of making it 

 better understood. 



Of the genus Eqmis there are not many species 

 probably not more than four ; the horse, properly so 

 called, the ass, the zebra, and the quagga though 

 there appears to be some varieties of the last. They 

 all resemble each other in the structure of their ske- 

 letons and the number and form of their teeth, as 

 well as in their digestive organs, much more than 

 almost any other genus of animals. The chief differ- 

 ences, indeed, upon which the distinctions are founded 

 are external, consisting in the different lengths of the 

 ears, the different character of the hair, more especi- 

 ally that in the mane and tail, the different markings, 

 and the general air and expression. So far as is 

 known, all the species are capable of intermixing so 

 as to produce mules ; and those mules are peifect 

 animals, capable of breeding back to the pure blood, 

 though two which are equally distant from the purer 

 blood will not breed with each other. Some remarks 

 on this subject will be found in the article Ass ; and 

 as we have, in that article, treated as fully of that 

 species as is consistent with our limits, we shall con- 

 fine the remainder of this article to a brief notice of 

 the remaining species and their leading varieties. 



We may, however, observe of the whole genus, 

 that they appear to belong, as natives, to a different 

 state of the earth than that which its present surface 

 now presents. The wild ass, the zebra, the quagga, and 

 also the wild horse of Central Asia, are all found on 

 the margins of the great sandy deserts, or at least in 

 those regions where there is a great breadth of coun- 

 try, which is alternately drenched with rain, and 

 burned with drought ; or where, as in Central Asia, 

 the general character is dryness. In all places where 

 they are found natives, they are inhabitants of the 

 plains, and not found on mountains, among rocks, or 

 in close forests ; neither do they follow the lines of 

 the great rivers, and the rich savannahs, so much as 

 the ox tribe. Their solid feet enable them to bound 

 lightly along hard pastures and sandy plains ; and 

 the comparative swiftness of some of the species, and 

 the power of endurance in the others, fit them for rang- 

 ing over long distances in search of their food. Accord- 

 ingly, all those which still occur in what may be con- 

 sidered as in a state of nature, are nomadic, or shift 

 their ground with the seasons. They are also, like 

 all herbivorous animals which thus seasonally shift 

 their ground, gregarious in their habits, and generally 

 found in large flocks or droves, usually living in 

 great harmony with each other, though the males, as 

 happens among most gregarious animals, fight des- 

 perate battles with each other in the season heat. 



Animals of this genus are so very peculiar in their 

 structure and habits, and differ so little from each other, 

 and have so few points of resemblance to any other 

 genus, that it is not easy to say either what are the 

 others to whom they are most nearly allied, or what 

 kind of country or condition of the world is best 

 suited to them. That it should be a state of the 

 country in which vegetable productions are rather 

 abundant, and dry at one season of the year, we may 

 naturally infer ; and it is probable that at one period 

 of the earth's history, they inhabited many places in 

 which they are not now to be found. In some points 

 of their characters they resemble the elephants not a 

 little ; but they differ greatly from them in others, 

 and especially in the elegance of their forms, and in 

 what is usually termed animal sagacity. They are 

 far from having the same resources as the dog family ; 

 and they do not come into such familiar contact with 

 man as to live in the house with him, to follow his 

 footsteps, and to watch and to be influenced by his very 

 looks. But still there is a wonderful degree of trac- 

 tability in them, and, when properly taught, there are 

 few animals more attached than a horse is to his rider. 

 And though there is a certain degree of stubbornness 

 in the ass, there is perhaps no animal more com- 

 pletely free from vice, or which endures with even 

 half the patience the very extremes of ill-usage. 



Thus, though their history as a portion of wild 

 nature, is exceedingly scanty, it 5s highly interesting so 

 far as it goes. There is another general point worthy 

 of notice ; the fossil bones of horses which are dug 

 up in countries which now contain no horses in a 

 state of nature, have been found in accumulations 

 very similar to those which contain the bones of the 

 extinct elephant, and some others of the extinct pa- 

 chydermata. This leads us to suppose that those 

 other extinct animals must have been co-inhabitants 

 with the extinct horses ; and thus, though the evi- 

 dence is rather imperfect and shadowy, we get at 

 least a glimmering of light upon which to found a 

 belief thac the world has, at one time, in our north- 

 western parts at least, been much more a region of 

 pachydermatous mammalia than it is at the present 

 time. Our belief in this is much strengthened when 

 we look at the vegetable remains which appear to 

 belong to the same period, and compare them with 

 the vegetation of those places which such animals 

 now chiefly inhabit. Those remains consist invariably 

 of vegetables of larerer growth and coarser texture 

 than those which at present cover the surface in the 

 same places ; and, with the exception of the horse in 

 a domestic state, for we really know very little about 

 wild horses, those pachydermata, which are entirely 

 vegetable in their feeding, feed upon much coarser, 

 or, as we may say, rougher vegetables than any of 

 the mammalia, with the exception perhaps ot the 

 beavers, and some others of the rodeutia which gnaw 

 sticks. We shall now briefly advert to the species. 



THE HORSE (E. CabaUus). As this is the tech- 

 nical species of the genus to which we have chiefly 

 referred in our general remarks, we do not need to 

 repeat any specific characters ; and, indeed, the ex- 

 tremes of the varieties, even in our own country, 

 which we may, perhaps, reckon from the Flanders or 

 dray-horse to the Shetland pony in point of size, and 

 from the same to the racer in point of symmetry, are 

 so numerous, that no single description could be so 

 framed as to include them all ; for the better that it 

 applied to one.it would be sure to apply the worse to 



