TKLEGONY AND REVERSION. 95 



my two zebra mares there were distinct shadow stripes on 

 the neck, and I have before me a photograph* of a zebra 

 in the Dublin Zoological Gardens showing four very dis- 

 tinct shadow stripes on the left side of the neck. In one 

 of my mares, which I understand was captured in the 

 Transvaal when a few weeks old, there were ten shadow 

 stripes on the left side of the neck (Fig. 25). These shadow 

 stripes, together with the twelve almost black stripes, made 

 twenty-two cervical stripes in all. On the right side there 

 were, in this mare, eight shadow stripes, which with ten 

 ordinary stripes made in all eighteen — a difference in the 

 two sides of four stripes. Evidently even the Burchell 

 zebras have had at one time a considerable number of dis- 

 tinct cervical stripes ; and Romulus in having twenty-four 

 cervical stripes, if he does not reproduce an ancestral plan, 

 in all probability approaches nearer to it than his sire 

 Matopo. Between the shoulder stripe and the root of the 

 tail there are, as already indicated, in the Somali zebra 

 over fort}^ stripes running outwards at each side at nearly 

 right angles to the dorsal band. In Romulus forty-three 

 stripes or portions of stripes may be made out between 

 the shoulder stripe and the root of the tail : in the 

 common zebra, notwithstanding its gridiron arrangement, 

 there are under thirty stripes. The first ten of these 

 stripes in Romulus seem to take the place of the five broad 

 nearly vertical stripes in Matopo. The stripes beyond the 

 tenth are at first narrow and indistinct, while over the 

 loins and croup they were at birth mainly made up of rows 

 of spots. Now that Romulus is a year old many of the 

 spots over the rump have united to form somewhat zigzag 

 stripes. t The majority of the stripes over the rump run 

 at nearly right angles to the dorsal band, but as the root 

 of the tail is reached some of them bend backwards, and 



* I am indebted to Professor D. J. Cunningham, P. U.S., of Dublin, for 

 this photograph. 



f This, I think, proves tiiat at least the transverse stripes over the 

 croup and rump, in the Somali and common zebras, have been formed bv the 

 running together of rows of spots. 



