A COUNTRY READER. 



PART I. FARM LIFE OF THE COUNTRY. 

 THE HORSE. 



THE horse has been the servant of man for 

 a very long time ; so long ago is it, that we have 

 no written record of when it began, but we do 

 know that at one time the horse led a wild life 

 and wandered in large herds over the great 

 plains of the world. 



When -horses lived in this wild state, they 

 had many enemies who tried to kill and eat 

 them, but their special enemy was the grim 

 Grey Wolf, with his never-ending hunger and 

 slow but untiring gallop. 



Let us now try to picture a scene of those 

 long bygone days. 



We see a wide, up and down, undulating plain, 

 stretching as far as the eye can reach, a plain 

 mostly hard and dusty, with dry, wiry grass 

 growing here and there ; and we see a herd of 

 wild horses wandering about not far from each 

 other, trying to satisfy their hunger with the dry 

 scanty herbage. And as we look we see a pack 



