468 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



doubt, faithful description of the colt and the filly that came out 

 of the mare that had previously produced the hybrid quagga; but 

 he has failed to show that none of the near-by ancestors of the 

 sire and dam of this colt and filly were of a dun color and were 

 marked just as the colt and filly were marked. Until it is shown 

 that the peculiar markings of this colt and filly could not have 

 been inherited from their natural ancestors, the half-formed 

 theory that they were the result of the coupling with the quagga, 

 years before, wholly fails to satisfy the human understanding. 

 When Lord Morton tells us that the dam was seven-eighths, and 

 the sire full Arabian, he seems to think he has covered that 

 point; but he has not, for he has not shown that there was a sin- 

 gle drop of Arabian blood in either of them. It must not be for- 

 gotten that at the period here referred to all Eastern and South- 

 ern horses were called Arabians, when not one in fifty of them 

 ever saw Arabia either through his own eyes or through the eyes 

 of any of his ancestors. The composite material out of which 

 the English race horse was built up was of all colors, including 

 the dun, with the dark stripe on his back, the short stripes or 

 patches on his shoulders, and the transverse bars on his legs. 

 A horse of this color, I am told, once won the Derby. The 

 Kattywar horses of Northwestern India, Mr. Darwin informs us, 

 are from fifteen to sixteen hands high, of all colors, with the 

 several shades of dun the most common, and when one of them 

 fails of having the spinal stripe, the shoulder stripes, and the leg 

 stripes the purity of his breeding is doubted. This is the type 

 of horse the British officers ride, and when their term of service 

 expires sometimes bring home with them. There are many 

 duns in Persia and in Eastern Asia Minor, I am informed, and 

 the stripes seem to belong to the color. In Norway the color of 

 the native horse is dun and the stripes are considered evidence of 

 pure breeding. Many of the mountain horses of Spain are duns, 

 with the stripes. The dun color prevailed, to a greater or less 

 extent, among the native English horses of three hundred years 

 ago, and some of them were brought to this country in the early 

 colonial period. Mr. Darwin, in his "Animals and Plants under 

 Domestication," fully describes the dun horses of Devonshire, and 

 in order to be clearly understood he figures one of them showing 

 the dark stripes on the shoulder and the transverse bars upon the 

 legs. I have seen numbers of dun horses so marked, in this 

 country, the most conspicuous that I can now recall being Wapsie, 



