mesticated, as we know by the Old Testament, from an ancient period,
which has varied only in a very slight degree. But this is by no means
strictly true; for in Syria alone there are four breeds;[139] first, a
light and graceful animal, with an agreeable gait, used by ladies;
secondly, an Arab breed reserved exclusively for the saddle; thirdly, a
stouter animal used for ploughing and various purposes; and lastly, the
large Damascus breed, with a peculiarly long body and ears. In this
country, and generally in Central Europe, though the ass is by no means
uniform in appearance, it has not given rise to distinct breeds like those
of the horse. This may probably be accounted for by the animal being kept
chiefly by poor persons, who do not rear large numbers, nor carefully match
and select the young. For, as we shall see in a future chapter, the ass can
with ease be greatly improved in size and strength by careful selection,
combined no doubt with good food; and we may infer that all its other
characters would be equally amenable to selection. The small size of the
ass in England and Northern Europe is apparently due far more to want of
care in breeding than to cold; for in Western India, where the ass is used
as a beast of burden by some of the lower castes, it is not much larger
than a Newfoundland dog, "being generally not more than from twenty to
thirty inches high."[140]

The ass varies greatly in colour; and its legs, especially the fore-legs,
both in England and other countries--for instance, in China--are
occasionally barred transversely more plainly than those of dun-coloured
horses. With the horse the occasional appearance of leg-stripes was
accounted for, through the principle of reversion, by the supposition that
the primitive horse was {63} thus striped; with the ass we may confidently
advance this explanation, for the parent-form, the _A. taeniopus_, is known
to be barred, though only in a slight degree, across the legs. The stripes
are believed to occur most frequently and to be plainest on the legs of the
domestic ass during early youth,[141] as is apparently likewise the case
with the horse. The shoulder-stripe, which is so eminently characteristic
of the species, is nevertheless variable in breadth, length, and manner of
termination. I have measured a shoulder-stripe four times as broad as
another; and some more than twice as long as others. In one light-grey ass
the shoulder-stripe was only six inches in l