249 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY 
THE MULE. 
The longevity of the Mule has become so proverbial, 
that a purchaser seldom inquires his age. Pliny gives an 
account of one, taken from Grecian history, that was eighty 
years old; and though past labour, followed others that were 
carrying materials to build the temple of Minerva at Athens, 
and seemed to wish to assist them ; which so pleased the 
people, that they ordered he should have free egress to the 
grain market. Dr. Rees mentions two that were seventy 
years old in England. I saw, myself, in the West Indies, 
a mule perform his task in a cane mill, that his owner as- 
sured me was forty years old. I now own a mare mule 
twenty-five^years old, that I have had in constant work 
twenty-one years, and can discover no diminution in her 
powers; she has within a year past often taken upwards of 
a ton weight in a wagon to Boston, a distance of more than 
five miles. A gentleman in my neighborhood has owned a 
very large mule about fourteen years, that cannot be less 
than twenty-eight years old. He informed me a few days 
since, that he could not perceive the least failure in him, 
and would not exchange him for any farm horse in the 
county. And I am just informed, from a source entitled to 
perfect confidence, that a highly respectable gentleman and 
eminent agriculturalist, near Centreville, on the Eastern 
Shore of Maryland, owns a mule, that is thirty-five years 
old, as capable of labour as at any former period. 
The great Roman naturalist, in one of the most beautiful 
passages of his elaborate history of nature, observes that 
“the earth is constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries 
of man than his necessities.”* We can have no doubt but 
that the remark applied with great justice to the habits of 
the Romans in the time of Pliny; and I am much mistaken 
if ample proofs cannot be adduced, that it will lose none of 
its force or truth, at this present period, in all northern cli- 
mates, or any section of the United States where the horse 
is employed for agriculture as well as for pleasure. Far be 
it from me, however, to disparage this noble animal; on the 
contrary I feel a strong attachment for him; and at the same 
time a full conviction, that the substitution of the mule, for 
* It is the earth that, like a kind mother receives us at our birth, and sus- 
tains us when born. It is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is 
never found an enemy to man. The body of waters deluge him with rains, 
oppress him with hail, and drown him with inundations: the air rushes on 
in storms, prepares the tempest, or lights up the volcano; but the earth, gen- 
tle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks 
with flowers, and his tableiwith plenty; returns with interest every good 
committed to her care, and though she produces the poison, she still supplies 
the antidote, though constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of man, 
than his necessities, yet even to the last, she continues her kind indulgence, 
and when life is over, she piously hides his remains in her bosom. 
Pliny's Natural History , Book II. Chap. 63. 
the purposes before stated, as extensively as may be consis- 
tent with the requisite production of each species, will have 
the effect of restoring the horse to the station from which 
he has been degraded, and place him as in former ages, upon 
a more dignified footing, an object of acknowledged luxury; 
and thereby introduce a more correct system of breeding 
and management, in which our countrymen are so gene- 
rally deficient, consequently more perfect animals and such 
an advance in the price of them, that will afford the farmer 
what he is now a stranger to — such remuneration as will 
make his brood mares a profitable species of stock. And it 
is obvious that the system will be followed by an improve- 
ment in the breed of mules, in the same ratio as the misera- 
ble race of scrub mares, which are now consuming the pro- 
fits of agriculture, shall become extinct. 
It does not appear that the horse was employed by the 
ancients for any purpose of husbandry. The ox and ass 
drew the plough and the wain, and performed all kinds of 
drudgery until after the feudal system was established in 
Europe, when the numerous retainers of the feudal lords, 
who held their lands by the tenure of performing knight’s 
service, found themselves under the necessity of making the 
horses they were obliged to keep, contribute towards their 
support in the cultivation. From this time I believe, we 
may date, and from this cause may be attributed, the intro- 
duction of the horse for the purposes of agriculture. Since 
that period, the history of Europe is little else than the an- 
nals of war and its preparations; and no material for that 
scourge, except the deluded human victims, seems more 
necessary than the hgrse — accordingly we find that through- 
out the whole country, from the Rhine or the Seine, to 
beyond the Danube and Vistula, which has been the princi- 
pal arena, the system of agriculture has embraced, exten- 
sively, the breeding of horses of different grades and forms 
adapted to the several uses in war. Indeed, whole pro- 
vinces were appropriated almost exclusively to the rearing 
those animals for disposal to the different combatants; and it 
must be obvious, that their general use in husbandry, at the 
same time, would follow as a necessary consequence. It 
cannot be expected therefore, but that the Dutch and Ger- 
mans who have emigrated to our country, should bring 
with them such strong predilections for the horse, which 
have continued with most of their descendants, especially in 
those sections where communities of that respectable and 
industrious portion of our population have been located. 
In Great Britain, to the causes which have produced the 
effects described on the continent, may be added the insular 
position of the United Kingdoms, vulnerable from number- 
less and distant points, the horse has been considered, in 
connection with the unconquerable spirit of the nation, as 
one of the most efficient means of repelling invasion: a cir- 
