THE ARMY MULE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 136, 4 March 1919, Page 7

THE ARMY MULE

Our prejudice against the mule is a deep-rooted one (6ays a London writer). General Birkbeck tells us that people here will not buy these animals. Yet they cost less, eat less, work harder and longer than horses. The stallions, it is true, are vicious, but there is' nothing else against them but their 6kimpy tails and long cars. Despite those defects the great 10-hand army mules, especially when dapple-grey, bay, or' chestnut in colour, are tine, handsome animals'. But, 110; Englishmen agree with Kipling, that "as for the mule, he's a mule,' and that is enough to condemn him.

Now the camel has not any too sweet a reputation for temper, yet wo heard a Yorkshire farmer who had transferred from (he Yeomanry to tho Camel Corps assert lie preferred camels to horses. "A horse wants watering three times a day, but 'you only water a camel every iive days. And thore aren't no stirrups and bits and trappings to be cleaned and polished. Temper P Taking them all round camels are not more vicious and nasty than horses. Why, my old Ibrahim know my voice, and would get np and come like a Christian when I oalled him."