120 DISTINCT SPECIES PRESENT [CHAP. V 



of all colours : transverse bars on the legs are not rare in duns, 

 mouse-duns, and in one instance in a chestnut ; a faint shoulder- 

 stripe may sometimes be seen in duns, and I have seen a trace 

 in a bay horse. My son made a careful examination and sketch 

 for me of a dun Belgian cart-horse with a double stripe on each 

 shoulder and with leg-stripes ; I have myself seen a dun Devon- 

 shire 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 stipes 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 information given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the 

 English 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 

 different 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 

 of tenest in duns and mouse-duns ; by the term dun a large range 

 of colour is included, from one between brown and black to a 

 close approach to cream-colour. 



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

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

 descended 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, fec., 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 ; according 



