Bibliothèque mondiale du cheval

« A history of the Solipede animals, of the species contained in the Linnaean genus Equus, and more recently designated by the appellation of Equidae, would be liable to disappoint a scientific reader if with Zoological view’s alone, he expected to find in its pages much that was new or unobserved by anterior writers ; for, when we consider, that in the genus, two species, the Horse and the Ass, hav.e been the object of the most unremitting attention to man from the beginning of human civilization, that poets, philosophers, statesmen, historians, rural-economists, warriors, hunters, speculators, physiologists and veterinarians have all objects where the horse at least forms a conspicuous element, that from the inspired poetry of the book of Job, from the times of Homer, Aristotle, Xenophon, Herodotus, Virgil, Varro, Columella, Gesner, Aldrovandus, Johnston, Buffon, Linnaeus, Pennant, Pallas, Gmelin to Cuvier, Bell, and a host of others, ancient and modern, facts and observations have been accumulating, researches pursued and descriptions produced, where we trace patient investigation and often eloquent description. It must he confessed that the inquiry is all but exhausted, and that we must confine our views to a collection of the more prominent facts, for the attention of those who have neither time nor inclination to search the whole field, and while due place is given them, draw forth from their general or particular tenor some observations and comparisons that perhaps have not as yet been offered to the public or have only met with transient attention. Thus we may still hope to submit in the result of our labours something worthy of notice to the learned, and not uninviting to the casual reader, whose object is merely to obtain correct information combined with amusement. » Présentation de l’éditeur (1840)

« Edinburgh, 1833-35 ; in-16. 1843, in-8° » Huth (1887)