to be unable on the same day to ride any one of them. An Engi lish horse, indeed, is become so precarious a possession, that, wherever he goes, it requires an English groom to keep him alive. We learn from veterinary writers that horses are more exposed to tetanus than the human subject; that rheumatism is frequent among them, and that they are not even exempt from gout. How different this from the horse in his savage state! While yet unsubdued, yet untouched by the withering hand of man, we find this beautiful animal so active and powerful that he easily defends himself against the strongest bull. At thirty years old, and even forty, he is known still to enjoy his full vigour. Pallas relates, vol. i. p. 324, that attempts were made to tame a young wild horse, at or near Samara, when he was there on his travels, but in vain; those who undertook the task were obliged to get rid of him. He adds, that this horse surpassed in strength the finest draft horses. "On rencontre encore quelquefois," says the same traveller, vol. iv. p. 305, "dans les steppes arrosées par le Taréi, le cheval sauvage que les Mongols appellent Dshiggétéi (longue-oreille). On rapporte qu'ils se tiennent par nombreux troupeaux dans la Mongolie, et surtout dans la vaste lande de Gobée, qui manque d'eau." "In the falling lands watered by the river Taréi, one sometimes still meets with the wild horse, which the Monguls call long-ears. They relate that these animals keep together in numerous herds in Mongolia, and particularly in the immense flats of Kobi, which are without water." This is considered as the fleetest of all quadrupeds: the antelope itself equals it not in swiftness. It would appear that the horse has no occasion to drink, any more than the camel,' when he has fresh pasturage. Our acquaintance with natural history does not present us with details on which to ground such an opinion, but it is very possible that there are fewer drinking animals than has hitherto been supposed. Pallas gives the following description of a savage colt: "La plupart sont ou fauves, ou roux, ou isabelles. Le poulain qu'on m'amena avoit cette derniere couleur. Il etoit déja parfaitement apprivoisé, ce qui n'est pas étonnant, puisqu'on l'avoit pris quelques heures apres qu'il fut né. En comparant exactement ce poulain sauvage avec d'autres poulains privés marquant la meme date, voici la difference que j'ai remarquée. Le poulain sauvage etoit plus haut; il avoit des membres plus forts; la tete plus grande, et la bouche garnie de longs poils, qu'on n'apperçoit qu'en bien petite quantité a la 1 66 "April 9. Our camels would not drink, notwithstanding they had drank but once since we left Aleppo, which was the 14th of last month, as they were furnished with plenty of fine herbage." PARSON'S TRAVELS IN ASIA AND AFRICA, p. 90. bouche des poulains privés, qui les ont en meme tems plus courts. Il avoit les oreilles beaucoup plus longues; les pointes en sont plus fortes et recourbées en devant; au lieu que le cheval privé les a tout droites. Il portoit les oreilles couchées en arriere, comme un cheval ordinaire les tient lorsqu'il a envie de mordre. Il avoit le front très-vouté ; la criniere paroissoit plus epaisse, et descendoit plus avant sur l'arçon. La queue etoit de meme forme que celle du cheval privé. Le crin en etoit noiratre. Le dos etoit moins vouté, que dans le cheval ordinaire. Il avoit le sabot plus petit et plus pointu. Son poil etoit frisé, principalement sur la croupe et vers la queue. J'ai dit que ce poulain etoit isabelle; il n'avoit point de raie dorsale; sa crinere etoit noire, et le contour de la bouche etoit couleur de celle des ânes." TOME V. p. 59. "The greater part of them are fawn-color, brown, or yellow dun. The colt which they brought to me was dun-colored. It was already quite tame, which is not surprising, as it had been caught a few hours after it was foaled. On comparing minutely this wild colt with several tame ones of the same age, I observed the following variations between them. The wild colt was taller; his limbs were stronger; his head larger, and his mouth covered with long hairs, of which a very small portion can be perceived on the mouths of tame colts, and those much shorter. His ears were a great deal longer; the points of them thicker, and bent outwards; whereas those of the tame colt were quite straight. He carried his ears as a common horse does when he is disposed to bite. His forehead was considerably arched, and his mane thicker, and descended lower on his shoulder than that of the tame colt. Their tails were of the same form; but that of the wild colt inclined to black. His back was less hollow than that of a common horse. His hoof was smaller and more perpendicular. His hair curled, principally on the rump and towards the tail. I have already remarked that this colt was of a dun-color; he had no streaks on his back; his mane was black," and the contour of his mouth was of the color of that of an ass.' In the mountains of Kamtskatka are found the wild sheep, which never drink. Mons. d'Auteroche, in his "Voyage_en Siberie," tome ii. p. 391, gives a description of them. "Les beliers sauvages, ou de montagnes, resemblent beaucoup à la chevre par leur allure, et à la renne par leur poil. Ils ont deux cornes qui sont entortillées comme celles des beliers d'Orda; elles sont seulement plus grosses. En effet, dans les beliers qui ont atteint toute leur grosseur, chaque corne pese depuis vingtcinq jusqu'à trente livres. Ces animaux sont aussi vifs à la course que les chevreuils, et en courant ils replient leurs cornes sur leur dos. Lorsqu'ils courent sur des montagnes remplies de precipices affreux, ils sautent de rochets en rochets à une tres grande distance, et gra vissent de leurs quatre pieds sur les plus pointus." "The savage, or mountain sheep, strongly resemble the goat in their gait, and the reign-deer in their hair. They have two twisted horns like the sheep of Orda; except that they are larger. In the full grown sheep, indeed, each horn weighs from twenty-five to thirty pounds. These animals are as active as goats in their movements, and, in running, bend back their horns on their backs. When they are pursued on mountains full of frightful precipices, they leap from rock to rock to a prodigious distance, and on the steepest of them they adhere with all their feet.”. But in the same country the common sheep die of the rot on the plains. "Le Kamtchatka et les environs des mers orientales et de Pengina n'ont point de paturages propres aux moutons, parceque l'humidité, et l'herbe trop abondante en suc, cause une espece de phtisie qui les fait perir en peu de tems." Tome i. "Kamtskatka and the environs of the eastern seas and the sea of Penginsk have no pasture suited to sheep, since the humidity and the too succulent grass occasion a kind of phthisis which quickly destroys them." It is a miserable thing to observe the low estimate which some naturalists make of the qualities of this ill-fated animal, although in his wild state he is certainly as respectable for strength and courage as his size entitles him to be. I lately saw a ram exhibited in Piccadilly, much taller than the common ones, measuring nearly three feet four inches to the top of the head, exclusively of the horns, covered with hair, every where strong and coarse, but long and shaggy at the mane. The lad in attendance rode on his back across the room, without any apparent inconvenience. At the sight of this I could not help reflecting that by domesticating the sheep and applying it to our cruel purposes, we load it with fat till the slightest exertion puts it out of breath; so that we even render it liable to roll over and be cast, as the shepherds call it, there often to lie on its back until the crows pick its eyes out, or until it perishes from inability to regain its legs. It is indeed no just matter of surprise that the domesticated sheep can never recover its wild state. After robbing the unfortunate creature of its own warm clothing, we keep it ready for the knife in a state of incipient rot, and then we exclaim, what a dull, sluggish, stupid looking animal is this! I shudder at the thought which forces itself on my mind. Tell me, reader, is that originally noble creature man more, or is he less deteriorated than the mouflon? Mr. Blumenbach, a German naturalist, appears to have committed an error in making the mouflon, or argali, in opposition to Pallas and Buffon, a species distinct from the domesticated sheep; for much as the parent race may differ from these in some respects, and great as is the superiority of the argali, or wild sheep, in strength and spirit, still Pliny and Columella tell us that it breeds with the common sheep. This animal has a very wide range. While it is found in Corsica and Sardinia, in the Greek islands, and in Barbary, Pallas had the opportunity and the satisfaction of examining it in the mountains of Siberia. It reaches the size of a small stag, is very compact in its frame, and has immense horns. One of these in the Academical Museum of Gottingen, and not a perfect one, weighs nine pounds. The varieties of the breeds of domestic sheep in different parts of the world are so considerable, that it is difficult to conceive how Mr. Blumenbach, to be consistent, should allow them to be producible by accidental causes. The many horned sheep, with four and sometimes five horns, are frequent in Iceland, Norway, and Russia. In the West Indies, and in other hot climates, what is wool in England becomes thin hair. There is a breed of sheep in Africa which have tails weighing about forty pounds the ovis strepsiceros, the Walachian sheep, have horns both twisted and spiral. The domestication of the hog produces so subversive a change in its constitution, that a little round animal, sui generis, and not unlike a pea in dimensions, is generated in its flesh, totally unknown in the wild boar; which if it bring not again into doubt the long exploded doctrine of equivocal generation, may lead at least to the inquiry whether animal semina themselves may not be formed by circumstances. Blumenbach states in his work, "De generis humani varietate nativâ," that the wild sow breeds only once a year, and the tame one twice. In his "Manual," &c. p. 119, he records the following facts: that wild swine have longer snouts and a form of the skull altogether different; short erect ears; larger canine teeth than the domestic swine; that they want that layer of fat between the skin and muscles observed in bacon. In the island of Cuba, where hogs were introduced from Europe, they have become twice as large as their European parents; and in Cubagua they have acquired a vast size, and have hoofs half a span long. The difference of the flavor of the hog when omnivorous, and when carefully reared on vegetables, is generally known and acknowledged. Pork, indeed, may have been so grossly fed as to occasion sickness in the stomach, and violent effects in the bowels, soon after it is eaten and this, when the food, though unnatural, shall have fallen very short of those disgusting excesses in which Boccacio tells us that with his own eyes he saw that animal indulge during the plague at Florence. I The wild animals, on the contrary, escape the evils above enu merated, as far as we are permitted to judge. Contagious distempers likewise we may conclude to be unknown among them; for we are never told by sportsmen, or by the country people, that the hares, the foxes, the crows, or any other tribe of untamed animals, are lying dead in numbers through the fields; nor is there reason to believe that they are subject to any debility, save that irremediable failure of strength consequent on their having reached the usual period of existence appointed to their kind by the Creator. As to what relates to the medical part of this question, to which I here acknowledge with due humility my own incompetence, one can scarcely open the works of any celebrated physician without being impressed in favor of Dr. Lambe's theory of diseases. Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, Haller, Arbuthnot, Cheyne, all, though in distant ages, furnish inadvertently their share of evidence in its support: nay, even authors so various as Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Sir Thomas More, Lord Bacon, Gassendi, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Adam Smith, (not to mention many other men of strong intellect and high estimation) have left passages in their writings which demonstrate that their minds were sometimes occupied by speculations on the beneficial effects of a cooling regimen. To give instances from a few of these authors: "And where the far-fam'd Hippemoigian strays, ILIAD, lib. 13. These lines prove Homer's opinion of the corrective effects of extreme temperance. The poet was not aware that milk was only a good diet comparatively, and not the very best that could be used. Man naturally is not at all a drinking animal. Fruits at least supply all the liquid he stands in need of. In Athenæus there is a quotation from Diphilus in Parasito, which I will here give in the Latin translation, and then in an English one. "Disce jam quantum mortalibus malum Venter sit, quot facinora necessitate quâdam nos coactos doceat. Hancce partem nostro corpori si adimas, Nemo sponte injusti quidquam aget, aliumve afficiet injuriâ: Nunc, ejus causâ, indigna et atrocia fiunt omnia." "Now learn what an evil to mortals their stomach is, what crimes it dictates to them, compelled as it were by necessity. NO. XXXVIII. VOL. XIX. Pam. 2 K |