110 INTRODUCTION. 



the back, cross-bars on the joints, and even on the 

 shoulder; the muzzle, mane, tail, and pasterns, 

 black. Isaiah mentions a chariot drawn by asses, 

 xxi. 7 ; and Herodotus, that the Medes used wild 

 asses to draw their war- chariots ; both apparently 

 referring to the dan variety, which can be traced 

 even now in the Ukraine, and is known in Scotland 

 by the name of eel-back dun : or they confounded it 

 with the hemionus, which we may take also to be the 

 Caramanian asses used in war-chariots, or took it for 

 the same breed ; as also a cream-coloured one that 

 penetrated very early into Greece, and was known 

 in the time of Homer by the name of Epeian. The 

 Eleian Epirotic, of dun colours, and subsequent 

 Dacian and Sarmatian, were coarser varieties. The 

 Asiatic and Greek are stated to have been of good 

 stature, but those of the Danube low, with small 

 heads, huge manes and tails, exceedingly hardy and 

 vicious, which is still in some measure true of the 

 Wallachian, and more particularly the Ukraine 

 race. * It was most likely this race which gave 

 Media a momentary ascendancy : they had the 

 mane shorn on the near side, while the off hair was 

 suffered to hang down at full length. But there 

 must have been a breed emphatically the Nisean, of 

 great rarity, since Masistius is stated to have rode 

 one at the battle of Platsea, and Xerxes was drawn 

 by four in his expedition to Greece : Alexander 

 gave another to carry Calamus to the funeral pile, 

 and the king of Parthia sacrificed another to the 



* This race was the first emasculated, on account of its fierce- 

 ness ; and hence geldings, in Germany, are still called Wallach. 



