104 TELEGONY AND REVERSION. 



extremely rare. Darwin as a youth seems to have been 

 devoted to horses. When at Cambridge he had a passion 

 for shooting and hunting, and wlien that failed riding 

 across country. This may partly account for his great 

 interest in horses in after years, for his systematically 

 collecting information about horses from all parts of the 

 world, that he might, if possible, come to some conclusion 

 as to the original colour and markings of their less remote 

 ancestors; Apparently Darwin only once noticed stripes 

 on the face. This was in a cob-like fallow-dun having a 

 conspicuous spinal stripe and its front legs well barred. 

 Darwin, however, learned from Colonel Poole that Kattia- 

 war horses had often " stripes on the cheeks and sides of 

 the nose." "^ I have only seen faint indications of stripes 

 on the sides of the face, but from what I have seen I have 

 no hesitation in saying that were a sketch made showing 

 all the stripes of which fragments have been observed on 

 the face of the horse during the present generation, the 

 sketch would closely resemble the head of one of my 

 hybrids and less closely the Amsterdam quagga. As 

 stripes on the forehead in the form of acutely pointed or 

 rounded arches are, as far as I am aware, only found in 

 the horse family, and as stripes are evidently being 

 gradually eliminated in horses, most will agree with me 

 that the facial stripes in the Norwegian pony are not new 

 creations, but vestiges of ancestral markings. t As to the 

 ears, I may mention I have seen two light dun-coloured 

 ponies — one from Shetland and one from Norway — with 

 the tips for quite half an inch almost white. In both cases 

 a dark broad band extended across beneath the light tip. 

 In the Norwegian with the striped face there are only a 



* ' Auimals and Plauts,' vol. i, p. 61. 



t Were they new creations they would, if tlie usually accepted view as 

 to the origin of stripes is correct, in all probability consist of rows of spots 

 in process of blending, instead of narrow, more or less distinct lines. 

 Further, the "blaze," so common in some breeds — whether in the form of 

 a lozenge or of a long white patch extending to the muzzle, — is easiest 

 accounted for by supposing the face of the ancestral horse resembled that 

 of the quagga or one of the zebras. 



