114 TELEGONY AND REVERSION. 



commonly called chance," ^ I fail to see what other 

 conclusion could be arrived at. 



Reversion in the Equidse. 



Having given reasons for the belief that the ancestors 

 of the horse were striped — striped more or less after the 

 pattern of the mountain zebra, — the impoi'tant question 

 may now be asked : Do horses without so much as a dorsal 

 band sometimes bring forth offspring with a considerable 

 number of stripes ? and the still more important question : 

 Are the stripes in such offspring due to reversion ? It is 

 "widely believed that stripes are not very uncommon at 

 lairth even in Arabian foals. I may add some recent 

 evidence in support of this belief. Two years ago I bred a 

 foal from a black Shetland pony, the siret being also 

 black and of the same strain as the dam. The foal, which 

 was of a reddish dun colour, presented at birth the fol- 

 lowing stripes : — (1) a dark dorsal band which extended a 

 short distance into the tail ; this baud widened as it 

 reached the croup, and again, as in many zebras, con- 

 tracted as it approached the root of the tail; J (2) a 

 shoulder stripe over six inches in length ; (3) one distinct 

 and five indistinct stripes on each side of the neck imme- 

 diately in front of the shoulder stripe, and three on the 

 body behind the shoulder stripe; and (4) a number of 

 very obscure stripes on the legs. In this foal the mane 

 was black and at first nearly erect, while the tail was of a 

 dark grey colour. When six weeks old the foal began to 

 shed its coat, and when two months old the markings had 

 completely disappeared from the legs and the sides of the 

 body, and they were less distinct on the m ck. When a 

 year old this colt was of a dark bay colour, but only re- 



* ' Origin of Species,' p. 129. 



t The sire was Wallace, a champion Shetland pony. 



I When the foal was two months old, this band consisted mainly of 

 erect reddish hairs (such as I have seen in zebra and zebra hybrid foals), 

 from which one is tempted to infer that in the remote ancestors of the 

 Equidse the mane extended right along the whole length of the back. 



