Volume 2
A history of the earth, and animated nature / By Oliver Goldsmith.
- Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774.
- Date:
- [between 1800 and 1899?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A history of the earth, and animated nature / By Oliver Goldsmith. Source: Wellcome Collection.
11/450
![A HISTORY OF ANIMALS. BOOK I. ANIMALS OF THE HORSE KIND. CHAP. r. OF THE HORSE.* ANIMALS of the horse kind deserve a place next to man, in a history of nature. Their activity, their strength, their usefulness, and their beauty, all contribute to render them the principal objects of our curiosity and care; a race of creatures in whose welfare we are interested next to our own. * As it may happen, that in a description where it is the aim rather to insert what is not usually known, than all that is known, some of the more obvious particulars may be omitted; I will take leave to subjoin in the notes the characteristic marks of each animal, as given us by Linnaeus. “ The horse, with six cutting teeth before, and single-hoofed ;* a native of Europe and the East (but I believe rather of Africa); a generous, proud, and strong animal; fit either for the draught, the course, or the road: he is delighted with woods; he takes care of his hinder parts; de- fends himself from the flies with his tail; scratches his feilow; defends his young; calls by neighing; sleeps after night-fall; fights by kicking, and by biting also; rolls on the ground when he sweats; eats tiie grass closer than the ox; distributes the seed by dunging; wants a gall-bladder; never vomits; the foal is produced with the feet stretched out; he is in- jured by being struck on the ear ; upon the stiffie; by being caught by the nose in barnacles; by having his teeth rubbed with tallow ; by the herbpadus; by the herb phalandria; by the cruculio; by the conops. His diseases are different in different countries. A consumption of the ethmoid bones of the nose, called the glanders, is with us the most infec- tious and fatal. He eats hemlock without injury. The mare goes with foal 290 days. The placenta is not fixed. He acquires not the canine teeth till the age of five years. [* In South America is found a horse whose hoofs are Undivided, like those of a ruminant quadruped. In its general appearance, size, and colour, it resembles the ass, but has the voice and ears of a horse, and lias no bauds crossing the shoulders* It is very wild, swift, and strong.] VOL II.—14. B](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28776094_0002_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
