176 HISTORY OF 



by their extreme fecundity they would soon over- 

 run the earth, and cumber all our plains with de- 

 formity. 



CHAPTER XI. 



ANIMALS OF THE HORSE KIND.* 



ANIMALS of the horse kind deserve a place next 

 to man, in a history of nature. Their activity, 

 their strength, their usefulness, and their beauty, 

 all contribute to render them the principal objects 



As it may happen, that, in a description where it is the aim rather to 

 insert what is not usually known, than all that is known, some of the more 

 obvious particulars may be omitted ; I will take leave to subjoin in the notes 

 the characteristic marks of each animal,* as given us by Linnaeus. " The 

 horse, with six cutting teeth before, and single- hoofed, a native of Europe 

 and the East, (but I rather believe of Africa), a generous, proud, and strong 

 animal, fit either for the draught, the course, or the road : he is delighted 

 with woods, he takes care of his hinder parts, defends himself from the flies 

 with his tail, scratches his fellow, defends its young, calls by neighing, sleeps 

 after night-fall, fights by kicking, and by biting also, rolls on the ground 

 when he sweats, eats the grass closer than the ox, distributes the seed by 

 dunging, wants a gall-bladder, never vomits; the foal is produced with the 

 feet stretched out ; he is injured by being struck on the ear, upon the stiffle, 

 by being caught by the nose in barnacles, by having his teeth rubbed with 

 tallow, by the herb padus, by the herb phalandria, by the cruculio, by the 

 conops. His diseases are different in different countries: a consumption 

 of the ethmoid bones of the nose, called the glanders, is with us the most in- 

 fectious and fatal. He eats hemlock without injury. The mare goes with 

 foal two hundred and ninety days. The placenta is not fixed. He acquires 

 not the canine teeth till the age of five years." 



* [Instead, however, of giving these characteristic marks in the notes, the Author has 

 in general incorporated them with the text. Where any part of them appears to have 

 been omitted, the deficiency has been supplied from the best authorities.] 



