In the present state of our arts there is one great occupation which we cannot conceive to be carried on without the services of horses. This is war. It is hardly too much to say that all our highly elaborated military system has depended for its development, as it does for its maintenance, on the transportation value of horses. Much has been said of late as to the use of bicycles as adjuncts to armies, and in a certain limited way they will doubtless prove serviceable in future campaigns; but no one who has had any experience of military duty, with its work across tilled fields and through forests, can imagine a man on a wheel rendering any very effective service except under peculiar conditions. Moreover, no ordnance corps can do its appointed work in the rear of a line of battle without sending its wagons across country and over ground which no unhorsed vehicle could traverse. The mark of the old utility of the animal in varied employment is retained in our use of the term horse-power in measuring the energy of engines. That gauge of strength of old determined what man could do in the severest taxes upon the forces at his command. In attaining the point where, owing to the possession of horses, he could use this standard, he won a great way beyond the station of his ancestors, who had but the strength of men at their command. Modern invention, by giving us heat-engines, has made the way for an advance. In another century, or even in another generation, the horse may, save for the uses of war, be confined to the position of a luxury and an ornament. THE FLOCKS AND HERDS: BEASTS FOR BURDEN, FOOD, AND RAIMENT Effect of this Group of Animals on Man.--First Subjugations.--Basis of Domesticability.--Horned Cattle.--Wool-bearing Animals.--Sheep and Goats.--Camels: their Limitation.--Elephants: Ancient History; Distribution; Intelligence; Use in the Arts; Need of True Domestication.--Pigs: their Peculiar Economic Value; Modern Varieties; Mental Qualities.--Relation of the Development of Domesticable Animals to the Time of Man's Appearance on the Earth.