84 ILLUSTRATED STOCK DOCTOR. 



animal labor, it may be, as i« sometimes claimed, that the wool-bearinQ 

 and milk-giving animals — especially considering that these same animals 

 furnish also a large proportion of our flesh food — are to be held as taking 

 the i)recedence ; but as to adaptability, becoming, as it were, a creature of 

 all work ; as to comeliness and quickness of motion ; as to a certain sym- 

 l)athy with his master that makes him at times so to partake of his spirit 

 and motions as to seem one with him ; as to a readiness of submission to 

 drudgery as well as to proud employments, he is without a rival in the 

 world. 



It is affirmed by many that the horse is a native of Asia, but of this we 

 really know nothing. Others affirm with equal, or almost equal, plausi- 

 bility, that he is a native of central Africa. "Where all is conjecture, it 

 is needless in a practical work of this character to speculate. Wherever 

 his primal home may have been, it is at least within the bounds of proba- 

 bility that his existence in Asia, in his present state of development, is 

 contemporary with that of man upon earth. Some among the very earli. 

 est records of the human race contain allusions to him as a well known 

 animal, in the service of man. The description in the Book of Job, a 

 production admitted to be of the very highest antiquity, is a case in point. 

 He is mentioned here, in glowing terms, as a martial adjunct to his mas- 

 ter — and not as a newly-discovered or recently-subdued creature, but as 

 one with which the world was familiar. Sculptured images of horses as 

 beautiful of form almost as the noble Arabian of to-day have been found 

 among the ruins of the cities of the desert. He is mentioned by Moses 

 in connection with the Egyptians ; and records older than the writings of 

 Moses point to his having been known and used by that singular people 

 from the dawn of their wonderful civilization. 



We find him thus in both Asia and Africa ; and during all the historic 

 period he has been present with man as though native to the soil of many 

 districts of both Continents. Whether borne thither by natural result of 

 migi-atory wandering, in a wild state, or whether by the ever-spreading 

 human family, there is little to guide us in determining. In the more 

 thinly populated districts of Asia, notably in Southern Siberia, great wild 

 herds have been long known to exist. 



Though, as we have previously intimated, there must have been a 

 noble breed of horses in Arabia in the days of their most ancient cities, 

 the introduction of the present breed into that country is thought to have 

 been of a comparatively modern date. It seems clear that long subse- 

 quent to the beginning of the Christian era there were few horses in 

 Arabia, and those few of no striking excellence, and that the now cele- 

 brated Arabians have either sprung from good horses introduced into the 



