of having the size, length and room to contain the fœtus on the side of the female parent.
The mule, again, which is the offspring of the male ass, has the great excess of his qualities,—the incomparable endurance, the patience, the faculty of subsisting and keeping himself in good condition where the horse would starve, and the extraordinary sure-footedness of the ass, and it must be added, in a great degree, his temper, his obstinacy, stubbornness and passive vice; although it is believed that, both in the ass and mule, these bad qualities have been greatly fostered and increased by the cruelty and neglect of ages—no such qualities being observed in the beautiful, docile and tractable asses of the East, where they have been from the most remote ages used as the saddle animals of the superior classes—and that they may, by kind and judicious treatment, be greatly modified, if not eradicated.
The hinny, on the contrary, although hardier, more patient, more enduring of privation and scanty fare than the horse, is infinitely inferior, in all these qualities, both to the ass and the mule; while he is at the same time gentler, more tractable, and nearer to the horse in temper,—strong arguments, it will be observed, for seeking invariably to have the qualities of the blood, temper, courage, spirit, on the side of the sire, those of form and size on that of the dam.
Both the mule and hinny are clearly modified asses,—that is to say, they have both more in their composition of the ass than of the horse, but the proportion of that more depends on the male, and not on the female parent. It appears that the vital energy and powder of transmitting organization is stronger in the ass than in the horse, probably because he is entirely in-bred, less changed by domestication, and nearer to his natural condition than the more
