XVI GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



brow, but during tbe summer it has been as short as iu her 

 zebra sire. Like her dam she had a very tbick winter 

 coat, consisting of long hairs ; but her summer coat is 

 smooth and shining, and made up of quite short hairs. 

 Though very like a zebra in make, this hybrid moves in 

 a somewhat different fashion from her sire. This may 

 be partly owing to her hoofs being unusually long, — they 

 ai-e relatively longer and more pointed than in Matopo. 



During the present summer four new hybrids by 

 Matopo made their appearance. Brenda^s dam produced 

 a second hybrid which has led to no little speculation. 

 Brenda, but faintly striped, might, at a little distance, 

 were it not for her long ears and low withers, be 

 taken for a half-bred yearling colt. The new hybrid 

 (Brenda^s own sister) is very dark in colour and quite a 

 zebra in action and habits. Last year some accounted for 

 Brenda showing little of the zebra by saying her dam, the 

 small cross-bred Clydesdale, was inbred, and they now 

 account for her full sister (Black Agnes) being zebra-like 

 by saying their common dam has been '^ infected," or, to 

 use Bruce Lowe's term, "saturated," by their common 

 sire Matopo. Should the Clydesdale mare have a third 

 hybrid, and then an ordinary foal, something definite may 

 eventually be established, both as to " saturation " and 

 telegony. 



But Black Agnes is interesting for yet another 

 reason. In Mulatto's second foal, as is fully described 

 in the telegony paper, there were several stripes across 

 the croup, at nearly right angles to the spinal ridge. In 

 foals of mares that have neither had offspring to zebras nor 

 asses, markings are at times seen across the hind quarters 

 — subtle bands, not due, as a rule, to colour, but rather 

 like water-marks on silk. Again, in one of Lady Meux's 

 hybrids out of a zebra mare, and in two dun-coloured 

 cobs I have had under observation, there are vestiges 

 of fairly broad stripes across the loins and croup — stripes 

 more like the bars of the gridiron in the mountain zebra 

 than the narrow zigzag lines in Romulus and some of my 

 other hybrids. In Black Agnes there were, at birth. 



