80 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



record of the colour of different horses, namely, 

 "The General Stud Book." So he transfers the 

 old error on to the new print, and if somebody is not 

 personally interested in the colour of the special 

 horse the error remains and becomes a pitfall in the 

 hands of persons who are not practical racing men. 

 In this way some supposed exceptions to Mendelian 

 inheritance of coat-colour in horses have been used 

 in an effort to disprove the operation of that law in 

 this character of horses. This has been done in 

 spite of the fact that these supposed exceptions do 

 not constitute more than two per cent, of the whole, 

 and in some cases even less. 



For years I have endeavoured to investigate and 

 correct such erroneous statements, but have had to 

 relinquish it as hopeless in all cases where the foal 

 was born dead, because very often nobody was to 

 be found who remembered the colour of such a foal. 

 In many cases I received an answer to this effect : 

 " I took it for a bay, but of course it might as 

 well have been a chestnut, for you cannot tell at this 

 age, and there was no reason to trouble about it 

 because the foal was dead." 



But in all cases, when the foal was still alive 

 and older than half a year, it was easy to show that 

 a mistake had been made, and the easier of course 

 if it had been raced. From the fifteen so- 

 called exceptions only two appeared on a race- 

 course. One of them is " Cyanean," bred by Lord 

 Londonderry in 1902. In the Stud Book of IU05 

 (Vol. XX.) it is given as a bay, and even in the 



