660 
MISCELLANEA. 
Natural History of The Horse. 
It is chiefly to the great deserts of Tartary and Siberia, that we 
are to look for the wild stock from which our invaluable domestic 
originally sprang. There, ranging together in large troops, they 
exhibit very surprising traits of sagacity and vigilance. Whilst 
they feed, they generally station one of their party at a little dis¬ 
tance, for the purpose of giving notice of the approach of danger. 
It is almost impossible to entrap them; and, when pursued, their 
swiftness of foot is such that it is not without great difficulty they 
can be overtaken. It is to Arabia that we have been principally 
indebted for the excellence of our breed of horses. In this wild 
and thinly populated country, the very existence of the owner 
sometimes depends upon the powers of his horse, and, consequently, 
the most minute and indefatigable attention is paid to the perfecting 
of the breed. And it is chiefly in consequence of this that the 
race is able to sustain infinitely greater fatigue and abstinence than 
the horses of any other country. A horse in that country, which 
cannot support itself for three days under continued bodily exer¬ 
tion is accounted of little value. If horses be well treated, and 
have proper care taken of them, it is said they will sometimes live 
to the great age of fifty years; but during part of this time they 
are generally so decrepid as to perform no services whatever to 
their owner. The flesh of the horse is eaten in several parts of Asia. 
The Calmuc Tartars live almost wholly upon it: they likewise 
drink the milk of the mare, and make of it both butter and cheese. 
In the Ottoman empire the grand vizier is always preceded by 
standards formed of horse-tails, each surrounded by a gilded ball. 
This became the military ensign of the Ottomans from the follow¬ 
ing singular circumstance :—One of their generals having had great 
difficulty in rallying his troops, who had been so unfortunate as to 
lose all their standards, thought, in the emergency of the occasion, 
of this device; to cut off the tail of one of the horses, and erect it 
on the point of a spear. The soldiers flocked to it, gallantly 
charged their enemy, and their exertions were at last crowned 
with victory. 
Bingley s Natural History . 
