RURAL LIFE 



DESCRIBED AND ILLUSTRATED. 



DIVISION L 



HOESES. 











rf r, 



CHAPTER I. 





THE EAKLY AND AXCIEXT HISTORY OF THE ITOKSE. 



As it is impossible to ascertain, with, any cer- 

 tainty, the original country of the Horse, it is, 

 in a practical work of this kind, unnecessary 

 to enter upon the discussion of the different 

 theories -which, upon this subject, have occu- 

 pied the minds of naturalists, and which have 

 resulted only in the maintenance of opposite 

 opinions. Which was the country where the 

 animal was first brought into a state of sub- 

 jection, is another unsettled point. Colonel 

 Hamilton Smith, notwithstanding his exten- 

 sive researches, seems to have felt the diffi- 

 culty of this one, and to have abandoned it in 



a sentence which appears to indicate a slight 

 sentiment of despair at the futility of his 

 labours. "Wo know," he says, in the 

 twelfth volume of the Naturahsl's Library, 

 " so little of the primitive seat of civilisation, 

 the original centre — perhaps in Bactria, in 

 the higher valleys of the Oxus, or in Cash- 

 mere, whence knowledge radiated to China, 

 India, and E'^ypt — that it may be surmised 

 that the first domestication of the post-diluvian 

 horse, was achieved in Central Asia, or com- 

 menced nearly simultaneously in several 

 regions, where the wild animals of the horse 



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