16 INHERITANCE. Chap. XIIL 



kinds of duns. In foals they are sometimes plainly seen, and 

 subsequently disappear. The dun-colour and the stripes are 

 strongly transmitted when a horse thus characterised is crossed 

 with any other ; but I was not able to prove that striped duns are 

 generally produced from the crossing of two distinct breeds, neither 

 of which are duns, though this does sometimes occur. 



The legs of the ass are often striped, and this may considered as 

 a reversion to the wild parent form, the Equus tseniopus of Abyssinia,^*^ 

 which is generally thus striped. In the domestic animal the stripes 

 on the shoulder are occasioiially double, or forked at the extremity, 

 as in certain zebrine species. There is reason to believe that the 

 foal is more frequently striped on the legs than the adult animal. 

 As with the horse, I have not acquired any distinct evidence that 

 the crossing of differently-coloured varieties of the ass brings out 

 the stripes. 



But now let us turn to the result of crossing the horse and ass. 

 Although mules are not nearly so numerous in England as asses, 

 I have seen a much greater number with striped legs, and with 

 the stripes far more conspicuous than in either parent-form. Such 

 mules are generally light-coloured, and might be called fallow- 

 duns. The shoulder-stripe in one instance w^as deeply forked at the 

 extremity, and in another instance was double, though united in the 

 middle. Mr, Martin gives a figure of a Spanish mule with strong 

 zebra-like marks on its legs,^^ and remarks that mules are particu- 

 larly liable to be thus striped on their legs. In South America, 

 according to Roulin,^^ such stripes are more frequent and con- 

 spicuous in the mule than in the ass. In the United States, Mr. 

 Gosse,^^ speakinii; of these animals, says, " that in a great number, 

 " perhaps in nine out of every ten, the legs are banded with 

 " transverse dark stripes." 



Many years ago I saw in the Zoological Gardens a curious triple 

 hybrid, from a bay mare, by a hybrid from a male ass and female 

 zebra. This animal when old had hardly any stripes; but I was 

 assured by the superintendent, that when young it had shoulder- 

 stripes, and faint stripes on its flanks and legs. I mention this case 

 more especially as an instance of the stripes being much j)lainer 

 during youth than in old age. 



As the zebra has such a conspicuously striped body and legs, it 

 might have been expected that the hybrids from this animal and 

 the common ass would have had their legs in some degree stripped ; 

 but it appears from the figures given in Dr. Gray's 'Knowsley 

 Gleanings,' and still more plainly from that given by Geoffroy and 

 F. Cuvier,^* that the legs are much more conspicuously striped than 

 the rest of the body ; and this fact is intelligible only on the belief 



30 Sclater, in ' Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' 1835, p. 338. 



1862, p. 163. ^3 ' Letters from Alabama,' 1859, p. 



31 ' History of the Horse,' p. 212. 280. 



32 'Alem. presentes par divers ^4 'Hist. Nat. des Mammiferes,' 

 Savans a I'Acad. Royale,' torn. vi. 1820, torn. i. 



