BREEDING, STOCK-RAISING, ETC. 461 



to the performance of the ordinary labors of the farm, but 

 he does better in heavily-loaded wagons upon the road, and 

 is especially preferable for the movement of machinery. Here 

 his superior powers of endurance give him such an advantage, 

 that in these services he will often last nearly as many years 

 as the horse will months. 



One idea that used to be quite prevalent,' and is still enter- 

 tained by some, in regard to the 'mule, is very erroneous, and 

 that is that he is never diseased. But that he is much less 

 liable to disease than the horse is undeniably true, and a fact 

 to which we are fully prepared to add our corroborative tes- 

 timony, from a long experience with both. Yet we have 

 known the mule to be afflicted with a large majority of the 

 ailments to which horse-flesh is heir, and have had occasion 

 to treat him for them. AVhen the ravages of big head were 

 at their highest in Western Tennessee and Northern Missis- 

 sippi, during the years from 1848 to 1850, inclusive, thou- 

 sands of mules in that region were numbered among its 

 victims, and many similar cases occurred in other sections of 

 the Southern States. We have repeatedly seen them suffer- 

 ing from spavin, ring-bone, narrow heel, founder, fistula, 

 colic; diseases of the lungs, of the skin, of the glands of 

 the throat, of the urinary organs, etc. Perhaps they are not 

 much less subject than the horse to certain constitutional 

 diseases, such as distemper, farcy, and glanders. But even 

 here one striking advantage remains with the mule — disease 

 yields much more readily to treatment than when it attacks 

 the horse. 



A very unjust prejudice against the mule exists in the 

 minds of many,^having its origin in the incorrect notion that 

 the mingling of the blood of the horse and ass is prohibited 

 in the Bible, in support of which view they quote the in- 

 junction to the Jews, " Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender 

 with a diverse kind." This precept is but a written inter- 

 pretation of one of I^ature's fundamental laws, yet it is by 

 no means clear that these two animals are of types so dis- 

 similar as to come within its limitation. The gendering of 



