290 HORSES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



vinces of Oran and Perm, the inhabitants of which have 

 a special aptitude for horse-breeding, and in the country 

 of the Don Cossacks, where horsemanship is an indis- 

 pensable part of the daily avocations of the people. 



Our import and export trade in horses is important. 

 In the six years preceding 1859 we imported 24,558, 

 and exported 13,218; the average value of those im- 

 ported being only about 20, while these exported 

 were worth about 90 a-piece. 



The Indian Government has long been paying great 

 attention to the rearing of horses, as well as importing 

 them from the Cape colony and Australia. Those pur- 

 chased in Egypt, at about 25 each, and shipped to 

 Bombay, it is calculated, cost the Government nearly 

 100 each, irrespective of casualties. The demand for 

 horses, instead of being diminished by the introduction 

 of railways, has been notably increased ; so little truth 

 has there been in the prophecy which appeared in the 

 4 Quarterly Keview ' some twenty-five years ago, that 

 the food of the horses supplanted by railways would 

 suffice for the nourishment of several millions of people. 



However interesting the preceding details may be to 

 those engaged in the rearing of horses, and however 

 proper it might be to dilate upon their importance to 

 the interests of agriculture, we turn from them, because 

 we do not intend to write a practical paper on horse- 

 flesh or, as our French neighbours scientifically phrase 

 it, " the equine species." We are merely about to tell 

 our readers a few things about horses in that gossiping 

 style in which Sir Francis Head is such a proficient. 

 There is no diminution in the vivacity, the wit, the 

 varied knowledge of men and things first exhibited in 

 'Kapid Journeys across the Pampas and over the Andes/ 

 and subsequently in ' Bubbles from the Brunnens of 

 Nassau,' ' Stokers and Pokers,' ' The Defenceless State 

 of Great Britain,' ' A Faggot of French Sticks,' &c. In 

 ' The Horse and his Eider,' the " old man " as he is 

 fond of styling himself is as witty and wise as ever, 



