442 



THE DOMESTIC ASS. 



carry seven or eight hundred pounds weight on their backs. 

 They are patient, indefatigable, and unrivalled in being sure- 

 footed, and these excellences render them most valuable beasts 

 of burden in mountainous countries j and the caution and 

 precision with which a drove of them, walking with great 

 regularity in a single line, will cross over the stupendous and 

 awfully narrow passes, or ascend and descend the almost 

 perpendicular steeps, have excited the astonishment of many 

 a tourist. 



The she-mule has, occasionally, but very rarely, been known 

 to produce again with a horse or an ass, or the he-mule with 

 a mare or an ass 5 but there is no instance on record of two 

 mules breeding together. 



THE DOMESTIC Ass. (Asinus ?) 



From the genus Equus, which consists of the horse only, the 

 genus Asinus, comprising the ass, zebra, quagga, djiggutai, &c., 

 is distinguished by the tail having long hairs at the end only, 

 where they form a brush, by the mane being short and erect 



