orm is
relatively inelastic. It is doubtful if any conceivable amount of care
would develop such variations as the horse now exhibits.

The principal hinderances to the general acceptation of the donkey as a
help-meet to man are found in its small size and slow motion. These
qualities make the creature unserviceable in active war or in
agriculture, and they seem to be so fixed in the blood that they are
not to any extent corrigible. So long as pack animals were in general
use, and in those parts of the world where the conditions of culture
cause this method of transportation to be retained, the qualities of
the donkey have proved and are still found of value. The animal can
carry a relatively heavy burden, being in such tasks, for its weight,
more efficient than the horse. It is less liable to stampedes. It
learns a round of duty much more effectively than that creature, and
can subsist by browsing on coarse herbage, where a horse would be so
far weakened as to become useless. Thus, in developing the mines in the
unimproved wilderness of the Cordilleras, where ores of the precious
metals have to be carried for considerable distances, trains of
"burros" are often employed. The animals quickly learn the nature of
their task, and will do their work with but little guidance from man.

In general we may say that the donkeys belong to a vanishing state of
human culture, to the time before carriage-ways existed. Now that
civilization goes on wheels, they seem likely to have an
ever-decreasing value. A century ago they were almost everywhere in
common use. At the present time there are probably millions of people
in the United States to whom the animal is known only by description.
In a word, the creature marks a stage in the development of our
industries which is passing away as rapidly as that in which the
spinning-wheel and the hand-loom played a part.

As the use of the ass in the economic arts began to decline, the mule
or hybrid progeny of this creature and the horse has progressively
increased. Although the value of this mongrel has been known,
particularly in southern Europe, from very early days, its most
extensive employment has been found in the old slave-holding States of
the Federal union. The custom of using mules has been almost unknown in
England, and has never been generally adopted in the northern part of
the United States. It appears to have been introduced into southern
regions by the Spaniards and the Fr