2O6 A. H. STURTEVANT. 



It is a recognized fact among the breeders of harness horses 

 that certain stallions never produce chestnut foals. In Wallace's 

 Monthly for February, 1880, there is an article by "Truth," in 

 which he says: "I have learned that neither of the brothers 

 [Volunteer and Sentinel] have ever sired a chestnut colt." W. H. 

 Marrett, in the September, 1890, issue of the same paper, tells 

 us that the two bay sires Volunteer and Electioneer never had 

 chestnut foals. Both were by a bay sire (Rysdyk's Hamble- 

 tonian, which appears in the first table below), one being from 

 a bay mare, the other from a brown. In a sale catalogue issued 

 in 1903 C. \V. Williams says of the brow r n stallion Belsire: "His 

 get are . . . bays, browns and blacks." This horse is a son 

 of the Electioneer mentioned above and of a black mare whose 

 sire was a black and dam bay. He is a full brother to the bay 

 Chimes which appears in the table below, and to Bow Bells, 

 bay, and St. Bel, black, both also probably homozygous. 



I have found a good many sires homozygous for Hurst's factor. 

 The small number of gray and roan sires in the table below is 

 to be explained by the small number of those colors existing. 

 It will be noticed that two of the number have one chestnut 

 foal each recorded. Director's was found in an advertisement 

 in a horse journal obviously a poor authority, as the pedigree 

 might easily have been false. That by Jay Bird is Cardenas, 

 trotting record 2:263/4. from a chestnut mare. He is recorded 

 as a chestnut by the "Year Book." But the "Year Book" does 

 sometimes make mistakes in the matter of color. Among others 

 I could mention is the case of the bay stallion Charley Wilkhurst, 

 recorded as a gray gelding. 1 In this connection it is worth noting 

 that Hurst found about I per cent, of exceptions recorded in his 

 investigation, but w r as able to explain most of them by showing 

 them to be probably mistakes. 



'See The Horse Review for December 12, 1905, p. 1424. 



