Hinny is easier to obtain when the lower chromosome count, the donkey, is in the male. Therefore breeding for hinnies is more hit-and-miss than breeding for mules." The male hinny or mule can and will mate, but the emission is not fertile. Male hinnies and mules are usually castrated to help control their behavior by eliminating their interest in females. Female hinnies and mules are not customarily spayed, and may or may not go through estrus. Female mules have been known, on rare occasions, to produce offspring when mated to a horse or donkey, although this is extremely uncommon. Since 1527,
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes us the landscape that makes us who we are." Several writers, such as the Scottish novelist Christopher Rush, have written of their own efforts to retrace Stevenson's steps. Accounts include a bicycle trip 25 years after Stevenson's hike and a comic adventure on the part of two British women. A section of Richard Holmes' "Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer" chronicles the author's retracing of Stevenson's journey as well. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879) is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's earliest published works and is considered a pioneering classic of