HISTORY. 469 



grasses are abundant ; and this change of character still 

 more appears when we have passed into Africa, or the sandy 

 deserts of Asia. There the light and agile horse of the 

 desert shews himself to be adapted to the scantier nourish- 

 ment on which he must subsist. The heavy horse of Eng- 

 land and the plains of Germany could no more subsist on the 

 herbs of the sands of Tripoli than on the heaths of Lapland. 

 He would perish in such circumstances, did not Nature pro- 

 vide the remedy, by adapting him to his condition. 



The colour of the hair of the Horse varies with causes 

 which we are unable to trace. Certain races exhibit a ten- 

 dency to certain colours, and retain them with surprising 

 constancy. A common colour of the domesticated Horse is 

 brown, of various shades, from light dun and chestnut to 

 bay. In various countries, from the Gulf of Bothnia to the 

 islands of the Indian Seas, are found horses of a mouse-dun 

 colour, with dark manes and tails, and a dark streak along 

 the spine, and sometimes even a cross at the shoulder. 

 Sometimes Horses are milk-white, of which colour are many 

 of the finest horses of Asia Minor, Persia, and the deserts of 

 Syria. These cream-coloured Horses have been held in 

 esteem in every age, and regarded as the fitting steeds of the 

 chariots of kings and heroes. The Circassian chiefs appro- 

 priated them to these uses ; and at this day some splendid re- 

 giments of Russian cavalry are mounted upon them. Often 

 the fur is clouded, of which the most common variety is gray ; 

 and sometimes it is brown upon a white ground, as in a 

 beautiful race found in the western termination of the Him- 

 alaya Mountains in Caubul ; and sometimes the different 

 colours are distinct, as in the variety termed piebald, a cha- 

 racter which remarkably distinguishes the mountain ponies 

 of parts of High Asia. The black colour is distinctive of 

 certain races of Europe, as those of Flanders and the fens of 

 England ; it is common, too, in Africa, but rare in Arabia 

 and the countries of the East. It is a common aphorism 

 of jockeys, that a good horse is never of a bad colour ; but 



