XVin GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Some of my hybrids in their movements are not unlike 

 their sire, but the two foals just referred to remind me 

 more of a young stag I watched trotting round a paddock 

 during the present summer. Whetlier this very elegant 

 action will be maintained as they increase in size remains 

 to be seen. 



I may here mention the surviving twin has helped to 

 assure me that hybrids may have as marvellous powers 

 of recovering from severe injuries as zebras. Two years 

 ago a zebra mare dragged from its place a heavy iron 

 feeding-trough. The trough was soon broken, and as 

 the mare reared and swung the trough about her loose 

 box, ere the rope could be severed her fore-limbs were 

 cut and bruised to an alarming extent. In a few days 

 she was all right again. The wounds healed without 

 suppurating, and without any swelling of the limbs. 

 Quite recently Matopo, when turning rapidly on the way 

 from his paddock, came into violent contact with one of 

 the rails of an upright fence. The skin between the two 

 halves of the lower jaw was torn so as to form a deep 

 pocket large enough to hold a walnut. Stitching was 

 out of the question, but in a few days the pocket was 

 closed, and the wound has mended so well that no scar 

 or irregularity in the striping can be detected. 



The twin was found one morning, when about two 

 months old, with a flap of skin five inches long, and 

 averaging one and a half inches in width, hanging down 

 over the front of the left fetlock. The skin was replaced 

 and stitched* along one side, but the upper part being dead 

 was cut off some days later. For a time the wound 

 looked hopeless enough, but now it is quite healed, and 

 only a very small scar is left. As in the zebra mare, there 

 has been no lameness, and from first to last a complete 

 absence of swelling either below the wound at the fetlock 

 or above in the vicinity of the knee. 



One of this summer's hybrids unfortunately died when 



* During the stitching the little hybrid fought desperately, and cried 

 piteously, sometimes uttering short barking sounds or crying like a 

 wounded hare. 



