28/ 



Whilst this law holds good with horses, however, 

 it is not so with cattle, as melanosis may attack the 

 latter of whatever colour ; thus it would appear that 

 bovine pigmentation is less equally distributed and 

 fixed than equine pigmentation. The white horses 

 referred to here must not be understood as albinos, 

 but rather as faded or reverted greys. Generally 

 speaking, dark-coloured horses possess more melanin 

 than light-coloured ones, and are believed to be gen- 

 erally hardier in consequence. 



Browns and dark browns are generally beautifully 

 dappled over the shoulders and quarters. Whether 

 this dappling, apparent miniature moons in shadow, 

 is inherited from the striped ancestors of the horse, 

 or is caused by a gradual arrestment of pigmentation, 

 it is difficult to say. Perhaps it may be fairly reason- 

 able to assume that the former is the cause and the 

 latter the effect, though they both act in undefined 

 conjunction. Since domestication has rendered un- 

 necessary the broken colouring essential in the 

 ** struggle for existence " in a wild state, it does not 

 seem a very unwarrantable hypothesis to assume that 

 ancestral striping has been slowly and gradually 

 abandoned for whole colours. 



All faculties, mental and physical, that are not 

 cultivated by general use, cease, in time, by a gradual 

 process of deterioration to be of definite service, and 

 become functionless — individually and collectively — 

 thus, when the problem of self-preservation became 

 less acute under a circumscribed environment due 



