VUl PREFACE. 



profess to believe its doctrines with any power which can 

 be separated from the potency of charity. It is not for him 

 to decide whether the conduct of a half-savage and a pagan 

 tribe should, in its fruits and in its results, shame the con- 

 sequences produced by the acts of men who boast of educa- 

 tion and worship the exemplification of self-sacrifice and of 

 love. 



Would man only be content to base observations upon 

 fact, anatomy has for a sufficient period ascertained a cir- 

 cumstance which should have startled public wonder into 

 exclamation. But, where the horse is involved, centuries 

 of prejudice appear to have generated a slothfulness of 

 comprehension which overpowers all ordinary intelligence. 

 In a bird a similar development has for ages been accepted 

 as the proof of peacefulness of disposition. The pigeon 

 congregates in flocks; it lives on vegetable substances, and 

 it possesses a liver which exhibits no gall-bladder. This 

 deficiency and these habits apply to the horse as literally 

 as to the feathered type of innocence. Perhaps the higher 

 status of the quadruped might be urged as the ground of a 

 primary title to human consideration. Yet the dove-cot 

 would seem to have blinded man to the merits of the 

 stable ! 



The horse possesses a full-sized liver; still the gland ex- 

 hibits no receptacle in which any excess of biliary secretion 

 may be retained. The testimony of nature associates the 

 creatures which man views as opposites, or regards as the 

 emblem of peace and as the living embodiment of inveterate 

 vice. Sameness and dissimilarity appear oddly united when 

 both lives are viewed as the creations of the Omniscient. 

 Resemblance in body should direct recognition to a likeness 



