It has been said of the common pig, that it is an animal “manufactured by man, and he makes it take such shapes as suit his wants best.” By careful feeding and breeding the tusks are lost, the bristles decrease, the head and legs diminish, the body and haunches greatly develop. Fed and sheltered, the pig is mild and lazy. Turned loose in the woods, for several generations, the snout and legs lengthen, the body grows thinner, and many of the characteristics of the boar return. Various famous breeds of pigs take their name from localities where they are reared, as the Berkshire, Suffolk, Norman, Pyrenean, and Perigord varieties. The horse is the most noble of all the thick-skins, and indeed of all brutes. Its immediate relatives are the ass, quagga, and zebra. The curious stages and changes in the development of the horse have already been given.[91] Docile and quick to learn, the horse has been trained and used by men from the earliest antiquity. Only one of this species remains superior to domestication, the wild ass of the Himalaya regions. The zebra also is restless and intractable, and is not often reduced to a domestic state. Why of all the horse kind should the gentle, tractable, humble, strong, patient, easily-fed donkey have been chosen as the constant recipient of scorn; abuse, and hard fare? Scant food and plentiful kicks and curses are the portion of one of the most useful and gentle of brutes. Much more hardy than his cousin, the horse, demanding only a little water and the coarsest fare, the poor donkey gets many blows and few thanks for tireless service. Hats off to the donkey, who always does the best he can. FOOTNOTES: [91] Lesson 5. LESSON L. EVEN TOES. “Then bend your gaze across the waste--what see ye? The giraffe Majestic stalks toward the lagoon, the turbid lymph to quaff; With outstretched neck, and tongue adust, he kneels him down to cool His hot thirst with a welcome draught from foul and brackish pool.” --F. FREILIGRATH. The order of ungulate has for its second sub-order the even-toed animals. This group is distinguished by the power and habit, which all its species have, of bringing back into the mouth, food already swallowed, in order to re-chew it thoroughly. This habit is called ruminating or chewing the cud. We have all observed it in sheep, kine, and camels.