DAPPLED AND STRIPED HORSES 



61 



that we see it, more or less, going through all the changing 

 colours of Horses ; and it would be almost as hopeless to give 

 distinct names to all the variations of colour in Horses, as it would 

 be to name all the shades of colour in domestic Pigeons. The very 

 fact that the dappling is so persistently inherited, either wholly or 

 vestigially, would indicate that it 

 comes from the very foundations 

 of Horse evolution. 



I have not been able to dis- 

 cover that any existing species of 

 the genus Equus, in the wild state, 

 is dappled. 



The earliest record of a dappled 

 Horse, in a state of domestication, 

 that I can find is taken from a 

 Spanish MS. of the eleventh cen- 

 tury. The quaintness of its mark- 

 ing is shown in Fig. 35, and the 

 author thinks it was of the Arabian 

 breed. The markings are most 

 conspicuous in the grey dappled 

 Horse, because the colours are 

 in black and white ; but the 

 dappling is traceable in the bay, 



the chestnut, the brown, the black, the roan, the cream, the dun, 

 etc. etc. The pure white, the pure black, and other pure self- 

 coloured Horses may be free from traces of dappling ; but the vast 

 majority of Horses are either fully dappled, or have traces of 

 dappling, and these are most persistent on the hind-quarters, 

 round the root of the tail. The Horses of the '2nd Life Guards 

 are either black or nearly so. I noticed that those which took 



FlG. 35. Spanish Horse, from Horses 

 of Antiquity, by Ph. Ch. Berjean (p. 23, 

 MS. xi. Cent.). 



