OEDEE OF PACHTDEEMATA. 183 



ratter the kings, along the coast of Asia Minor were zealously 

 addicted to horse-dealing, and they have done their part to 

 spreading far and wide the famed Arab blood. Armenia also 

 furnished Horses to the early dealers of Tyre and Sydon. Cyrus 

 collected together in his stables 800 stallions and 1,600 mares. 

 The Numidian Horses were also celebrated for the elegance of 

 their shape and the swiftness of their pace, characteristics pre- 

 served by them to the present day. 



The invention of the art of horsemanship is ascribed to the 

 Scythians. "When that nation made its first appearance in Greece, 

 the inhabitants of Thrace were struck with surprise and dread, 

 imagining that the man and the animal formed one and the 

 same body, unquestionably this is the origin of the Centaurs of 

 mythology. We find the same apprehension and the same dread 

 existing among the American savages, when the natives of the 

 Mexican coast saw for the first time the troopers of Fernando 

 Cortes disembark upon their shores. 



The remote epoch to which we can trace back the Horse being- 

 employed as a domestic animal renders it very difficult to determine 

 its original country. For a long time it was assumed to be 

 Arabia, but historical facts and other considerations deduced from 

 the nature of the Horse render this hypothesis improbable. At 

 the present day, we are generally led to consider the Horse as 

 originally a native of Asia, and that it appeared for the first time 

 either on the vast central plateau, which occupies so large a space 

 in this quarter of the globe, or on the steppes to the north-east of 

 the Caucasus. As the originally wild Horse does not exist in anj^ 

 country, it is quite as impossible to recognise its primeval traces 

 in historic times, as to state with any certainty the native country 

 of the first Oxen, the first Goats, the first Pigs, the first Sheep, or 

 the first Dogs. 



There are, however, droves of Horses free and imowTied living on 

 the plains of Asia and the pampas and prairies of America ; but all 

 zoologists agree in considering them as the descendants of certain 

 domestic races, somewhat modified in their shape and habits by 

 having reverted to a state of liberty. At the date of the dis- 

 covery of the New World, it is certain that no animal of the Horse 

 genus existed there; at the present day, on the contrary, we 

 find immense hordes of them, which, through their wild and ex- 



