

VERTEBRATA. 







; mmmfem 



GUEEK HOUSES, FROM THE FRIEZES OF THE PARTHENON. 



and bis time is come, we content ourselves by stripping off his hide, making manure of his 

 blood, Prussian blue as well as cat and dog meat of his flesh, and a top-dressing for our fields of 

 his pulverized bones. Truly the horse enters largely into the pleasures as well as the pains-of 

 human life! 



The history of the horse, as far as we are able to trace it, always presents that animal as sub- 

 dued to man's use; nowhere does it give us any account of wild horses, except such as have be< n 

 bred from domestic oiks. The earliest written notices of this animal are in the sacred writi 

 Vbraham, [saac, and Jacob had asses, which are spoken of in the enumeration of their riches, 

 with camels and sheep, but nowhere is it stated that they had horses. In the time of Moses, the 

 Hebrews did not use them even in battle, though Pharaoh and his host came against them with 

 chariots drawn by horses. 



King David, we are told, captured a thousand chariots and seven hundred horsemen in his 

 conflict with Hadadezar, the Philistine, but he houghed or hamstrung all the horses save one 

 hundred, which he reserved for chariots. But Solomon his successor, it appears, introduced this 

 animal largely into the military and state service, for the Bible tells us he had forty thousand sti 

 of horses for his chariots and twelve thousand for his cavalry. These animals came partly from 

 pt and partly from < 'oa. 

 The Book of Job informs us that the Arabians were in possession of this animal, but Straho 

 a that in his time they wen' not found in the southern portions, comprehending the greater 

 part of Arabia Felix. When Mahomet, in the early part of his career, marched against Mecca 

 hastise hi> enemies there, he had only two horses in his army, and it is to be noted that amid 

 his spoils there were camels and sheep, and silver and captives, but no horses. The subseqi 

 con of the followers of the prophet supplied them with horses, and from that time the bn 



ing of them has been carefully practiced in Arabia. The famous Arabian breed is of compara 

 tivdy modern d 



Bomer, in the Iliad, speaks of the numerous stud of Priam, and says that Erichtonius, an an* 



tor of the Trojan king, had three thousand mares and the like number of colts. The Greeks, 



however, did nol use the horse in war till long after it had been thus employed in Egypt, As6j 



9 ythia. At the battle of Marathon, 490 B. C, they had no horses,'and. at that of PlatBa, 



a year later, with an army of one bundled and ten thousand foot, they had not a single squadron 



of cavalry. Tiny were in fact in danger of being trodden underfoot by the myriads of Persian 



