164 MULES. 



consider that a 7nule, especially a well bred one, 

 would be in himself and in their view, one of the best 

 formed and most distinguished of animals, if they had 

 never seen a horse ; they must admit, however, that 

 he holds the second rank instead of the first, and it is 

 principally from this circumstance that so little atten- 

 tion has been paid to him in both countries. Com- 

 parison is the chief cause of his degradation — they 

 look at and give their opinions not of himself, but 

 comparatively with the horse. They seem not aware 

 that he is a mule — that he has all the qualities of his 

 nature, all the gifts attached to the connecting and final 

 link of two distinct species, and think only of the figure 

 and qualities of the horse which are wanting in him, 

 and that he ought not to have ; for he possesses those 

 of more intrinsic value, which the supreme Author of 

 nature has denied to both of his parents. 



There are few subjects of animated nature that have 

 engaged the attention of the most eminent naturalists, 

 more than the genus Equus, to which the horse and 

 ass, with their hybrid oiFspring, are assigned. Lin- 

 ncBus, with a view to establish, by new arguments, his 

 doctrine, or theory of the sexual system of plants, 

 which SpaUanzani had attempted to overturn, illus- 

 trated their generation by pursuing the chain of nature 

 from the animal to the vegetable kingdom ; and has 

 taken prominent examples from the two difierent pro- 

 ductions of mules. He says, " from the mare and male 

 ass proceeds the mule, properly so called, which in its 

 nature, that is, in its medullary substance, nervous 

 system, and what Malpighi calls the keel, {carina,) 

 hoitom in sportsmen's language, is latent in, and 

 derived from the mare. But in its cortical substance 

 and outward form, in its mane and tail, resembles 



