MULES. 181 



be tied up in separate stalls, and often rubbed down. 

 By such treatment there is not more danger of having 

 a vicious mule than a vicious horse ; and I am deci- 

 dedly of opinion, that a high spirited mule so managed 

 and well broke, will not jeopardize the lives or limbs 

 of men, women, or children by any means so much as 

 a high spirited horse, however well he may have been 

 trained. 



The longevity of the mule has become so proverbial, 

 that a purchaser seldom inquires his age. Pliny gives 

 an account of one, taken from Grecian history, that 

 was eighty years old; and though past labour, followed 

 others, that w^ere carrying materials to build the temple 

 of Minerva, at Athens, and seemed to wish to assist 

 them ; which so pleased the people, that they ordered 

 he should have free egress to the grain market. Dr. 

 Rees mentions two that were seventy years old in 

 England. I saw myself in the West Indies a mule 

 perform his task in a cane-mill, that his owner assured 

 me was forty years old. I now own a mare mule 

 twenty-five years old, that I have had in constant work 

 twenty-one years, and can discover no diminution in 

 her powers ; she has within a year past often taken 

 upwards of a ton weight in a wagon to Boston, a 

 distance of more than five miles. A gentleman in my 

 neighbourhood has owned a very large mule about 

 fourteen years, that cannot be less than twenty-eight 

 years old. He informed me a few days since, that he 

 could not perceive the least failure in him, and would 

 not exchange him for any farm horse in the country. 

 And I am just informed, from a source entitled to 

 perfect confidence, that a highly respectable gentleman 

 and eminent agriculturist, near Centre ville, on the 

 Eastern Shore of Maryland, owns a mule that is 



