HORSES, HORSES, HORSES

The mechanical age, perhaps realizing that the means of transportation and the aid to labor which was the custom of all previous centuries should not be allowed to fade entirely from the mind of man, has seen fit to erect a lasting memorial to the horse. A section of the American Museum of Natural History is to be set aside for relics of the horse age; skeletons, plaster casts, paintings--all recalling the day when the horse was the rule, not the exception are to be stored therein. If the children of tomorrow are to be deprived of the sight of the actual animal they shall at least have an opportunity to know what it looked like.

Today dinosaurs are the chief delight of museum habituees; tomorrow the horse will supersede them. Already there are the beginnings of a horse mythology; this famous horse who could pull an impossible number of tons without straining a muscle, that one who was fleeter than the wind. Black Beauty threatens to become an epic. And in the present month, Mr. Will James writes the history of Smoky, a horse, and is greeted by the enthusiastic applause of critics. It is well that the animal who worked unceasingly for hundreds of years should be sentimentalized, and, if possible, immortalized. Far less worthy traditions have been held sacred.