82 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HORSE, 



intellectual capacity. Travelers in the desert assure us thai 

 horses possess the faculty of directing their course to the nearest 

 water, when hard pressed for that necessary article. 



Horses swim with the greatest facility, and the distances they 

 have been known to perform in the water exceed our expecta- 

 tion. A horse that was wrecked off the coast of South America 

 Bwam seven miles to land, thus saving his life. 



There exist some important differences in the animal 

 economy of the equine family and that of other herbivorous 

 /^nimals, which, as the inferences from them are of some conse- 

 juonce, it is necessary briefly to notice. The horse naturally 

 req\s'res but little sleep, and even that it often takes standing\ 

 In a Rtate of nature, when fodder is short, to support itself 

 propeW;'' it is con-pelled to graze twenty hours out of the 

 twenty -ft*, r. Eurainating animals eat with greater rapidity, 

 and lie dc.vn to chew the cud. The horse eats no faster than 

 it digests. Digestion in the former is interrupted ; in the latter, 

 continuous. This explains why the horse has no gall-bladder, 

 as it requires no reservoir for thai necessary fluid ; for, as fast 

 as the bile is secreted by the liver it is carried to the intestines 

 to perform its important action on the chymous mass. The 

 stomach of the horse is also remarkably small and simple, dif- 

 fering widely from the capacious and complicated structures 

 of the ruminantia ; but the intestines are long, and the ccecum 

 capable of containing a large quantity of fluid, of which it is 

 considered the receptacle. The mamma of the mare is by no 

 means so pendulous and bulky as that of the cow. The horse's 

 feet, from their compact, undivicccd nature, are much less liable 

 to injury during fleet exertion than those of the ox. All these 

 circumstances teni to establish the individuality of the horse, 



