144 DISTINCT SPECIES PRESENT 



horses is so generally striped, that, as I hear from Colonel 

 Poole, who examined this breed for the Indian Government, 

 a horse without stripes is not considered as purely bred. 

 The spine is always striped, the legs are generally barred, 

 and the shoulder-stripe, which is sometimes double and some- 

 times treble, is common ; the side of the face, moreover, is 

 sometimes striped. The stripes are often plainest in the 

 foal, and sometimes quite disappear in old horses. Colonel 

 Poole has seen both gray and ba}^ Kattywar horses striped 

 when first foaled. I have also reason to suspect, from infor- 

 mation given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the 

 English race-horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in 

 the foal than in the full-grown animal. I have myself 

 recently bred a foal from a bay mare (offspring of a Turko- 

 man horse and a Flemish mare) by a bay English race-horse. 

 This foal, when a week old, was marked on its hinder 

 quarters and on its forehead with numerous very narrow, 

 dark, zebra-like bars, and its legs were feebly striped. All 

 the stripes soon disappeared completely. Without here 

 entering on further details I may state that I have collected 

 cases of leg and shoulder-stripes in horses of very different 

 breeds in various countries from Britain to Eastern China, 

 and from Norway in the north to the Malay Archipelago in 

 the south. In all parts of the world these stripes occur far 

 oftenest in duns and mouse-duns. By the term dun a large 

 range of color is included, from one between brown and 

 black to a close approach to cream color. 



I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written 

 on this subject, believes that the several breeds of the horse 

 are descended from several aboriginal species, one of which, 

 the dun, was striped ; and that the above-described appear- 

 ances are all due to ancient crosses with the dun stock. But 

 this view may be safely rejected, for it is highty improbable 

 that the heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welsh ponies, Norwegian 

 cobs, the lanky Kattywar race, etc., inhabiting the most 

 distant parts of the world, should all have been crossed with 

 one supposed aboriginal stock. 



Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several 

 species of the horse genus. Rollin asserts that the common 

 mule from the ass and horse is particularly apt to have bars 

 on its legs ; according to Mr. Gosse, in certain parts of the 

 United States, about nine out of ten mules have striped 

 legs. I once saw a mule with its legs so much striped that 

 any one mi^ht have thought that it was a hybrid zebra ; a&4 





