CHAPTER X 

 MULES AND OTHER HYBRIDS 



THE fact that mares and male asses will readily 

 interbreed, although their product is sterile, has 

 been known from very early times ; Homer men- 

 tioning in the Iliad that the hemionus, or mule, 

 originally came from Henetia, in Pontic Asia 

 Minor, which was inhabited by a Paphlagonian 

 people. In a second passage it is stated that 

 mules were brought to Priam at Troy from Mysia ; 

 this according well with the first statement, as the 

 Mysians and Paphlagonians were neighbours, and 

 the route to the country of the former lay through 

 that of the latter. 1 To the Greeks, the mule was 

 known either as hemionus (half-ass) a name now 

 employed as the scientific designation of the onager 

 or oreos or oureos (the mountain animal) ; the 

 latter title being given from the fact that mules 

 were used to carry loads of wood from the 

 mountains to the plains. 



The word mule is derived from the Latin 

 mulus, which is itself believed to take its origin 

 from the Greek muchlos, a breeding ass, the 



1 Heyn and S tally brass, Wanderings of Plants and Animals ', 

 p. in. 



225 



