INTRODUCTION. 



of horses. The Numidian, Mauritanian, and fulvous 

 Gaetulian, with long lips, bold lion hunters, but 

 smaller than the last mentioned, and less valued, 

 were of the same origin. The Cyrenian, handsome 

 and fleet horses ; the Calpe breed, and Lusitanian 

 of Spain, and the Agrigentine of Sicily, bays and 

 chesnuts, with some white, appear to belong to this 

 stock, conveyed westward by Phoenician and Car- 

 thagenian ships, and partially mixed with other 

 blood. But the dark bay, Peleian of Epirus, were 

 no doubt of the true original stock. 



The next in historical importance was the Mediarf 

 race, best known by the name of Nisean ; because, 1 

 in the plain about Mount Corone, there was in the 

 time of Darius an enormous hippobaton belonging 

 to the government, whence the ill-fated monarch 

 drew one hundred thousand horses to oppose the 

 Macedonian invasion, and still left fifty thousand in 

 the pastures, which Alexander saw in his march 

 through that country ; they were all, it appears, of 

 a dun or cream colour, which caused some Greek 

 writers to assert that the Median cavalry was 

 mounted upon asses ; * but shows that it was de- 

 rived from the wild race, further north, which is 

 still of a similar colour, with an asinine streak down 



* " Nisa omnes equos flavos habet." Plin, The Nisean plain 

 is mentioned by Arrian and Diodorus. Ammian. Marcel, places 

 their pastures in the plains of Assyria, west of Mount Corone, 

 which forms a part of the Zagros chain. Alexander, in passing 

 through Kelone, on his march to Ecbatana, saw the remaining 

 herd. The spot is now a resort of the Beni Lam Arabs. This 

 locality does not agree with other authorities, who place tha 

 Nisean plain east of Casbeen. 



