18 THE PENYCUIK EXPERIMENTS. 



and third foals of Lord Morton's mare, be still more 

 banded, or even provided witli a fraction of the bands 

 seen in the photograph, a very good case will have been 

 made out for telegony. 



It is still impossible to say what colours the hybrid will 

 eventually assume, but I believe a number of the bands 

 will all but disappear, and that the dark stripes will be 

 separated from each other by bay or dun-coloured spaces. 

 It is quite possible that hybrids bred from light-coloured 

 mares may retain a light body colour and, even when full- 

 grown, have the stripes as distinct as a zebra. 



Before leaving the hybrid I may point out that its 

 existence raises a number of interesting questions. In 

 1808 Frederic Cuvier published in the Annals du Museum 

 d'Histoire Naturelle '^ a note on the mating of an Arab 

 horse with a zebra mare which had previously bred with a 

 male donkey. Unfortunately the mare died some months 

 before the period of gestation Avas completed. Since then 

 several hybrids have been bred between zebra mares and 

 ponies, but apparently a hybrid between a pony mare and 

 any of the members of the large BurchelU group of zebras 

 has not hitherto been obtained. Mules, i. e. hybrids 

 between a jackass and mares, are alike common and 

 valuable ; while hinnies, i. e. hybrids between a pony and 

 a she-ass, are rare in England, but comparatively common 

 in Ireland. While hybrids between ponies and zebra 

 mares may not prove specially useful, hybrids between a 

 zebra stallion and ordinary mares (what some would call 

 zebra mules) may have a great future before them. Cap- 

 tain Lugard, who has done splendid pioneer work, more 

 especially in East Africa, recommended some years ago 

 " that an attempt should be made to obtain zebra mules 

 by horse or donkey mares,^' because he believed such 

 mules " would be found excessively hardy, and imper- 

 vious to the fly [the dreaded tsetse fly] and to climatic 

 diseases." 



* Vol. ii, p. 237. 



