es mentioned in history are of that race, while the
heavier and less mettlesome horses of Northern origin have been, when
pure bred, dun coloured or white.

Of the Italian breeds mentioned by Varro, Professor Ridgeway
conjectures that the Etruscan (or Rosean) was probably an improved
Northern horse, while the Apulian, from the South of Italy,
represented an admixture of Libyan blood.]

[Footnote 141: Aristotle (_H.A._ VI, 22) preceded Varro with this good
advice, saying that a mare "produces better foals at the end of four
or five years. It is quite necessary that she should wait one year
and should pass through a fallow, as it were--[Greek: poiein osper
neion]."]

[Footnote 142: Mules were employed in antiquity from the earliest times.
In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule
team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles
in a mule litter. Homer professes to prefer mules to oxen for
ploughing. There were mule races at the Greek games. Aristotle
(_Rhetoric_, III, 2) tells an amusing story of Simonides, who, when
the victor in the mule race offered him only a poor fee, refused to
compose an ode, pretending to be shocked at the idea of writing about
"semi-asses," but, on receipt of a proper fee, he wrote the ode
beginning: "Hail, daughters of storm-footed mares," although they were
equally daughters of the asses.]

[Footnote 143: The breed of Maremma sheep dogs, still preferred in
Italy, is white. He is doubtless the descendant of the large woolly
"Spitz" or Pomeranian wolf dog which is figured on Etruscan coins.]

[Footnote 144: In his essay,_Notre ami le chien_, Maeterlinck maintains
eloquently that the dog alone among the domestic animals has given his
confidence and friendship to man. "We are alone, absolutely alone, on
this chance planet: and amid all the forms of life that surround us
not one excepting the dog has made alliance with us. A few creatures
fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves: but they serve us in spite
of themselves.... The rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at
our approach, like birds. Among the animals, we number a few servants
who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity:
the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is
attached to nothing ... the cow and the ox happy so long as they are
eating and docile because fo