LAWS OF VARIATION 131 



a dun Belgian cart-horse with a double stripe on each shoulder 

 and with leg-stripes. I have myself seen a dun Devonshire pony, 

 and a small dun Welsh pony has been carefully described to me, 

 both with three parallel stripes on each shoulder. 



In the north-west part of India the Kattywar breed of horses 

 is so generally striped, that, as I hear from Colonel Poole, who 

 examined this breed for the Indian Government, a horse without 

 stripes is not considered as purely bred. The spine is always 

 striped, the legs are generally barred, and the shoulder-stripe, 

 which is sometimes double and sometimes treble, is common; the 

 side of the face, moreover, is sometimes striped. The stripes are 

 often plainest in the foal, and sometimes quite disappear in old 

 horses. Colonel Poole has seen both gray and bay Kattywar horses 

 striped when first foaled. I have also reason to suspect, from in- 

 formation given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the Eng- 

 lish race-horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in the foal 

 than in the full-grown animal. I have myself recently bred a 

 foal from a bay mare (offspring of a Turkoman horse and a 

 Flemish mare) by a bay English race-horse. This foal, when a 

 week old. was marked on its hinder quarters and on its forehead 

 with numerous very narrow, dark, zebra-like bars, and its legs 

 were feebly striped. All the stripes soon disappeared completely. 

 Without here entering on further details I may state that I have 

 collected cases of leg and shoulder-stripes in horses of very differ- 

 ent breeds in various countries from Britain to Eastern China, 

 and from Norway in the north to the Malay Archipelago in the 

 south. In all parts of the world these stripes occur far oftenest in 

 duns and mouse-duns. By the term dun a large range of color is 

 included, from one between brown and black to a close approach 

 to cream color. 



I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written on 

 this subject, believes that the several breeds of the horse are de- 

 scended from several aboriginal species, one of which, the dun, 

 was striped; and that the above-described appearances are all due 

 to ancient crosses with the dun stock. But this view may be safely 

 rejected, for it is highly improbable that the heavy Belgian cart- 

 horse, Welsh ponies, Norwegian cobs, the lanky Kattywar race, 

 etc., inhabiting the most distant parts of the world, should all 

 have been crossed with one supposed aboriginal stock. 



Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several species of 

 the horse genus. Rollin asserts that the common mule from the 

 ass and horse is particularly apt to have bars on its legs; accord- 

 ing to Mr. Gosse, in certain parts of the United States, about 



