THE HISTORY OF THE HORSE. 
419 
language and rich imagination in descriptions of his beauty, spirit, 
and pride. 
Thus Antar:—“Shedad’s mare was called Jerivet, whose like 
was unknown. Kings negociated with him for her, but he would 
not part with her. ‘ Seek not to purchase my mare,’ he cried, 
‘for Jerivet is not to be bought or borrowed. I am a strong castle 
on her back, and in her bound are glory and greatness. I would 
not part with her were strings of camels to come to me, with their 
drivers following them. She flies with the wind, without wings, 
and tears up the waste and the desert. I will keep her for the 
day of calamities, and she shall rescue me when the battle dust 
rises.’ ” There are many touches in a similar spirit in the history 
of the horse, Dalies, which was the occasion of a war among the 
Arab tribes. At a great feast, when the conversation turned upon 
celebrated horses, one said of Dalies, “He startles every one that 
looks at him; he is the antidote of grief to every one that beholds 
him, and he is a strong tower to every one that mounts him. 
When a night of dust sheds its obscurity, you may see his hoofs 
like a firebrand.” 
The Divine command to the Hebrews not to multiply horses, 
recorded in Deuteronomy, xvii, 19, has been a subject of much 
research and controversy with biblical critics. Michaelis, a learned 
orientalist and biblical critic of the last century, in his interpreta¬ 
tions of the law of Moses, &c. gives much curious and valuable 
information on the subject. The divine command to Joshua to 
“ hough the horses of the Canaanites,” chapter xi, was the conse¬ 
quence of the above injunction. We find David also acting upon 
a similar occasion in the same manner. To hough a horse (the 
word is of Saxon derivation) is to hamstring it, or cut its thigh 
sinew. Michaelis, who has devoted an article to this subject, and 
to whom we acknowledge much obligation for various illustrative 
information about horses, observes, that many expositors, from 
ignorance of military affairs and of the veterinary art, suppose 
the command in Joshua xi to mean, not that the horses should 
be killed, but merely lamed in the hind legs, and then let go. 
But a horse thus severely injured would fall instantly back, and 
writhe about miserably until he died. The hamstringing can be done 
in an instant, and the animals generally bleed to death, or, should 
they survive, the wound never heals, so that even if the enemy 
recovered them alive they were ulimately obliged to destroy them. 
He adds, it were inconsistent with the humanity of the law-giver 
to lame the horses without putting them to death: the permanent 
laming of a horse that would still live would have been extreme 
cruelty, for, being wholly useless, no one would care for it, or 
supply it with food. 
