10 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



character and form by the agencies of food and climate, and it 

 may he by other causes unknown to us. He sustains the tem- 

 perature of the most burning regions ; but there is a degree of 

 cold at which he can not exist, and as he approaches this limit 

 his temperament and external conformation are affected. In 

 Iceland, at the Arctic Circle, he has become a dwarf; in Lapland, 

 at latitude 65, he has given place to the reindeer ; and in Kamt- 

 schatka, at 62, he has given place to the dog. The nature 

 and abundance of his food, too, greatly affect his character and 

 form. A country of heaths and innutritious herbs will not 

 produce a horse so large and strong as one of plentiful herbage ; 

 the horse of the mountains will be smaller than that of the 

 plains ; the horse of the sandy desert than that of the watered 

 valley."* 



IL BEEED8. 



The genus Equus, according to modern naturalists, consists 

 of six different animals the horse (L. caballus) ; the ass (E. 

 (Minus) ; the quagga (E. quagga) ; the dziggithai (E. hemionus) ; 

 the mountain zebra (E. zebra} ; and the zebra of the plains 

 (E. lurcJielli). 



Of the horse there are many varieties or breeds. Ineffect- 

 ual attempts have been made to decide which variety now 

 existing constitutes the original breed ; some contending for the 

 Barb and others for the wild horses of Tartary. It is of the 

 latter that Byron thus speaks in "Mazeppa:" 



With flowing tail and flying mane, 

 With nostrils never streaked with pain, 

 Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein, 

 And feet that iron never shod, 

 And flanks uascarred by spur or rod, 

 A thousand horse the wild, the free 

 Likes waves that follow o'er the sea, 

 Came thundering on. 



The principal breeds of horses now bred in the United States 

 are the Race-Horse, the Arabian, the Morgan, the Canadian, 



* Illustrations of the Breeds of Animals. 



