FOR PEACE AND WAR. 115 



CHAPTER IX. 



Ancient and modern writers, from the dawn of civilization 

 to the imperial crowning of " William the Divine," at Ver- 

 sailles, have had included amongst those Avriting on horses 

 and horse matters, statesmen, philosophers, rural-economists, 

 poets, historians, sportsmen, veterinarians, physiologists, 

 and variously impregnated amateurs. From the time of 

 Job, through Homer, Xenophon, Aristotle, and Herodotus, 

 on through the works of Buffon, Cuvier, and Bell, and 

 hosts of others, the horse has, from one motive or another, 

 been the object of careful investigation, and frequently 

 vivid and poetic as well as practical and exhaustive descrip- 

 tion. It is questionable, however, that the enquiry, though 

 long and minute, has had more of research of a general 

 character regarding the natural history of the animal than 

 with regard to his strictly domestic relations to man, in his 

 subjugated and imi^roved state, dealing with those character- 

 istics and attributes that an advanced civihzation and the 

 modern requirements of war, fashion, or sport, together 

 with the demands of commercial and agricultural pursuits 

 call for, as all important to us as a people in these work-a- 

 day and shifting times of the nineteenth century. 



Like the Irish postillion who keeps a gallop for the 

 avenue, with the wise and laudable view of pleasing his 

 " fare " before the important moment, to the Jehu, of 



