170 NATURAL ' HISTORY IN ANECDOTE.

in his gallop, that 2 wheelbarrow might have been drives
between them. King Herod, another famous horse, which
was generally, though not like Eclipse uniformly, successful, is
chiefly celebrated for his progeny; his immediate descendants
having gained to their owners above two hundred thousand
pounds.”

he Horse's Many marvellous stories are told of the en-
Endurance. durance of the horse. Sir John Malcolm says,
*Small parties of Toorkomans, who ventured several hundred
miles into Persia, used both to advance and retreat at the
average of nearly one hundred miles a day. They train
their horses for these expeditions as we should do for a race,
and describe him when in a condition for a foray by saying
that his flesh is marble. When I was in Persia, a horseman
mounted upon a Toorkoman horse, brought a packet of letters
from Shiraz to Teherary, which is a distance of five hundred
miles, within six days.” Almost equally remarkable records
are held by English horses, but the invention of the loco-
motive has done away with the necessity for such trying
expeditions in civilized countries, and the horse is trained
more for speed and strength than for such long distance
efforts. M. de Pages in his travels round the world, tells a
remarkable story of the endurance of the horse when out of
his natural element; he says, “I should have found it diffi-
cult to give it credit had it not happened at this place
(the Cape of Good Hope) the evening before my arrival;
and if, besides the public notoriety of the fact, I had not
been an eyewitness of those vehement emotions of sympathy,
blended with admiration, which it had justly excited in the
mind of every individual at the Cape. A violent gale of
wind setting in from north and north west, a vessel in the
road dragged her anchors, was forced on the rocks and
bulged; and, while the greater part of the crew fell an im-
mediate sacrifice to the waves, the remainder were seen from
She shore struggling for their lives, by clinging to the different