464 



THE OKIGIX OF THE LIBYAN HORSE 



[CH. 



brown, but faintly striped ; the second, by an American trotting- 

 horse, is brilliantly and richly decorated with brown stripes 

 over a bright bay background ; the third hybrid, by a Shetland 

 or Highland pony, is only very faintly and partially striped \ 



It is almost certain that the American trotting-horse was 

 better bred, i.e. had more North African blood in him, for 

 most of the blood in such trotting-horses is thoroughbred"'', 

 than either of the other sires, a supposition rendered all the 

 more likely by the fact that his progeny was bay, a sure index, 

 as we have seen, of the presence of Libyan blood. This cir- 

 cumstance may well account (prepotency apart) for the fact 

 that the hybrid by the American horse is much more richly 

 striped than those by the other sires. 



If then the hybrids of horses and zebras are the more 

 striped, in proportion as the horse parent, whether it be sire 

 or dam, is better bred, there is certainly a prima facie pro- 

 bability that stripes are more connected with North African 

 than with Asiatic blood. 



Darwdn's view that the original ancestor of the Equidae w^as 

 a dun-coloured animal striped all over was based, not merely 

 on the occurrence of stripes in horses, which we have just 

 discussed, but on his belief that such stripes were common 

 in dun-coloured horses, and that there w^as a tendency 

 in horses to revert to dun colour. But it must be confessed 

 that the facts do not w^arrant his conclusion. In the first 

 place, we have just seen that stripes are specially characteristic 

 of the North African horse and its descendants. But, as we 

 have shown on an earlier page, that the North African horse is 

 invariably dark in colour unless there has been admixture from 

 Europe or Asia, it follows that stripes, so far from being more 

 closely connected with dun colour, are in reality as constant 

 a feature of dark-coloured horses, such as the pure Arab of 

 the Anazah breed, the English thoroughbred, and the South 

 American pampas horses, the last mentioned being, as we 

 saw above (p. 435), universally of a dark colour, bay largely 

 predominating. 



1 Ewart, Guide to Zebra Hybrids, pp. 33-4, figs. 28, 29 (Shetland pony sire). 

 ^ Wallace, The Horse of America, pp. 456-7. 



