[CHAPTER VI.]
SOMETHING MORE ABOUT BREEDING MULES.
Before I close this work, I desire to say something more about breeding mules. It has long been a popular error that to get a good mule colt you must breed from large mares. The average sized, compact mare, is by all odds the superior animal to breed mules from. Experience has satisfied me that very large mules are about as useless for army service as very large men are for troopers. You can get no great amount of service out of either. One is good at destroying rations; the other at lowering haystacks and corn-bins. Of all the number we had in the army, I never saw six of these large, overgrown mules that were of much service. Indeed, I have yet to see the value in any animal that runs or rushes to an overgrowth. The same is true with man, beast, or vegetable. I will get the average size of either of them, and you will acknowledge the superiority.
The only advantage these large mares may give to the mule is in the size of the feet and bone that they may impart. The heavier you can get the bone and feet, the better. And yet you can rarely get even this, and for the reason that I have before given, that the mare, in nineteen cases out of twenty, breeds close after the jack, more especially in the feet and legs. It makes little difference how you cross mares and jacks, the result is almost certain to be a horse's body, a jack's legs and feet, a jack's ears, and, in most cases, a jack's marks.
Nature has directed this crossing for the best, since the closer the mare breeds after the jack the better the mule. The highest marked mules, and the deepest of the different colors, I have invariably found to be the best. What is it, let us inquire, that makes the Mexican mule hardy, trim, robust, well-marked after the jack, and so serviceable? It is nothing more nor less than breeding from sound, serviceable, compact, and spirited Mexican or mustang mares. You must, in fact, use the same judgment in crossing these animals as you would if you wanted to produce a good race or trotting horse.
We are told, in Mason and Skinner's Stud Book, that in breeding mules the mares should be large barrelled small limbed, with a moderate-sized head and a good forehead. This, it seems to me, will strike our officers as a very novel recommendation. The mule's limbs and feet are the identical parts you want as large as possible, as everyone that has had much to do with the animal knows. You rarely find a mule that has legs as large as a horse. But the mule, from having a horse's body, will fatten and fill up, and become just as heavy as the body of an average-sized horse. Having, then, to carry this extra amount of fat and flesh on the slender legs and feet of a jackass, you can easily see what the result must be. No; you will be perfectly safe in getting your mule as large-legged as you can. And by all means let the mare you breed from have a good, sound, healthy block of a foot. Then the colt will stand some chance of inheriting a portion of it. It is natural that the larger you get his feet the steadier he will travel. Some persons will tell you that these small feet are natural, and are best adapted to the animal. But they forget that the mule is not a natural animal, only an invention of man. Let your mare and jack be each of the average size, the jack well marked, and No. 1 of his kind, and I will take the product and wear out any other style of breed. Indeed, you have only to appeal to your better judgment to convince you as to what would result from putting a jack, seven or eight hands high, to a mare of sixteen or more.
I have witnessed some curious results in mule breeding, and which it may be well enough to mention here. I have seen frequent instances where one of the very best jacks in the country had been put to mares of good quality and spirit. Putting them to such contemptible animals seemed to degrade them, to destroy their natural will and temper. The result was a sort of bastard mule, a small-legged, small-footed, cowardly animal, inheriting all the vices of the mule and none of the horse's virtues--the very meanest of his kind.
[CHAPTER VII.]
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE MULE.
The mule seems to have been used by the ancients in a great variety of ways; but what should have prompted his production must for ever remain a mystery. That they early discovered his great usefulness in making long journeys, climbing mountains, and crossing deserts of burnings and, when subsistence and water were scarce, and horses would have perished, is well established. That he would soon recover from the severe effects of these long and trying journeys must also have been of great value in their eyes. But however much they valued him for his usefulness, they seem not to have had the slightest veneration for him, as they had for some other animals. I am led to believe, then, that it was his great usefulness in crossing the sandy deserts that led to his production. It is a proof, also, that where the ass was at hand there also was the horse, or the mule could not have been produced. Any people with sufficient knowledge to produce the mule would also have had sufficient knowledge to discover the difference between him and the horse, and would have given the preference to the horse in all service except that I have just described. And yet, in the early history of the world, we find men of rank, and even rulers, using them on state and similar occasions; and this when it might have been supposed that the horse, being the nobler animal, would have made more display.
The Scriptures tell us that Absalom, when he led the rebel hosts against his father David, rode on a mule, that he rode under an oak, and hung himself by the hair of his head. Then, again, we hear of the mule at the inauguration of King Solomon. It is but reasonable to suppose that the horse would have been used on that great occasion, had he been present. On the other hand, it is not reasonable to suppose that the ass, or any thing pertaining to him, was held in high esteem by a nation that believed they were commanded by God, through their prophet Moses, not to work the ox and the ass together. It must be inferred from this that the ass was not held in very high esteem, and that the prohibition was for the purpose of not degrading the ox, he being of that family of which the perfect males were used for sacrifice. The ass, of course, was never allowed to appear on the sacred altar. And yet He who came to save our fallen race, and open the gates of heaven, and fulfil the words of the prophet, rode a female of this apparently degraded race of animals when He made his triumphal march into the city of the temple of the living God.