•J THE HORSE. 



motes our highest degree of luxury, and painfully 

 toils through the lowest and severest drudgery. In' 

 fine, after a life of ceaseless and laborious exertion, 

 his carcass is sold for the support of other animals, 

 and his hide is in constant request for various im- 

 portant branches of manufacture. Surely this noble 

 quadruped, in the first place, on the score of his 

 being endowed by nature with feelings similar to our 

 own, and in the next, from a regard to his manifold 

 and indispensable services, richly merits that justice, 

 consideration, and compassion from man, which it 

 is most lamentable and disgraceful he does not ex- 

 perience. 



Indigenous Breed and Improvements of this Country. 



Little is known of the indigenous breed of horses in 

 these islands, but that they were comparatively small 

 in size, and so to express it, of a wild and unaltered 

 form ; yet, on the Invasion by the Romans, Caesar 

 found the British horses regularly harnessed to the 

 war-chariots. It is, however, certain that we began to 

 import at a very early period ; and that our improve- 

 ment, not only of the horse, but of all other domestic 

 animals, now beyond possible competition, superior to 

 that of all other countries, has resulted, in the first 

 instance, from constant periodical importations. Thus 

 the best breeding stock of every kind has been selected 

 from all, even the most distant regions ; and the result 

 has been, that the selections here introduced and deni- 

 zened have invariably, in consequence of our skill, 

 industry, the feeding and incrassating nature of our 

 gramineous soil, and the mildness of our climate, far 



