2G7 ON THE FECUNDITY OF MULES. 
Juvenal evidently held similar belief on the infecundity of the 
mule, since in one of his satires he says— 
Egregium sanctum que virum si cerno, bimembri 
Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro 
Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae. 
Herodotus also tells us, that at the time Xerxes was march¬ 
ing his army to Greece and crossing the Hellespont, a mule 
brought forth a young one. 
Yarro saw a mule produce at Rome. 
Magon and Denis assert that the she-mule and mare, when 
once in foal, go twelve months. 
Jules Ossequente says that the war between CaBsar and 
Pompey was announced by the accouchment of a mule. 
Pietro Valeriano speaks of a mule foaling at Rome in the 
year 1518; and adds, that the epoch was rendered celebrated 
by the apostacy of Luther. 
Scaliger, in his commentary on Aristotle, says that a mule 
had young twice. 
Buffon cites the circumstance of a she-mule, in the island of 
St. Domingo, having given birth to a lie-mule. 
M. de Nanzio, director of the veterinary school at Naples, 
has taken considerable pains to make us acquainted with a 
similar occurrence in the parish of Anzano, province Capitanata, 
(Sicily), in July 1844, in a mare-mule, the property of Fran¬ 
cesco Mastrangelo. In this memoir, M. de Nanzio has been at 
the pains to make sketches both of parent and offspring. Never¬ 
theless some doubt hangs over the genuineness of this produce. 
It is worthy of remark, and observation seems to have con¬ 
firmed its exactitude, that mares covered by stallion asses 
become invariably impregnated at the first leap, while the con¬ 
trary happens between the ass and the horse. Speaking me¬ 
taphorically, the ass seems to corrupt and destroy the genera¬ 
tion of the horse. Indeed, according to M Lecomte, if we give 
a mare first the horse, and the next day or the same day, or 
subsequently, give her a stallion ass, she will almost invariably 
produce a mule and not a horse; though the contrary to this 
does not happen when the stallion ass is given first, and the 
horse afterwards, to the mare; the offspring being still a mule. 
This is, however, a fact calling for confirmation. 
But let us now inquire the reasons why these hybrids prove 
barren; though we know that they are not altogether so. 
Some authors assert that differences are to be found in the 
anatomy of their genital organs. Although various alleged dif¬ 
ferences in the organs themselves, or in their secretions or pro¬ 
ducts, have been pointed out, we believe that they all need 
substantiation. 
