66 ASSES : Chap. II. 



The ass varies greatly in colour ; and its legs, especially 

 the fore-legs, both in England and other countries — for 

 instance, in China — are occasionally barred more plainly 

 than those of dun-coloured horses. Thirteen or fourteen 

 transverse stripes have been counted on both the fore and 

 hind legs. With the horse the occasional appearance of leg- 

 stripes was accounted for by reversion to a supposed parent- 

 form, and in the case of the ass we may confidently believe in 

 this explanation, as^. tceniopus is known to be barred, though 

 only in a slight degree, and not qiiite invariably. The stripes 

 are believed to occur most frequently and to be plainest on 

 the legs of the domestic ass during early youth,""' as likewise 

 occurs with the horse. The shoulder-stripe, which is so emi- 

 nently characteristic of the species, is nevertheless variable 

 in breadth, length, and manner of termination. I have 

 measured one four times as broad as another, and some more 

 than twice as long as- others. In one light-grey ass the 

 shoulder-stripe was only six inches in length, and as thin as 

 a piece of string; and in another animal of the same colour 

 there was only a dusky shade representing a stripe. I have 

 heard of three white asses, not albinoes, with no trace of 

 shoulder or spinal stripes ;*' and I have seen nine other asses 

 with no shoulder-stripe, and some of them had no spinal 

 stripe. Three of the nine were light-greys, one a dark-grey, 

 another grey passing into reddish-roan, and the others were 

 brown, two being tinted on parts of their bodies with a 

 reddish or bay shade. If therefoie grey and reddish-brown 

 asses had been steadily selected and bred from, the shoulder- 

 stripe would probably have been lost almost as generally and 

 completely as in the case of the horse. 



The shoulder stripe on the ass is sometimes double, and 

 Mr. Blyth has seen even three or four parallel stripes.*^ I 

 have observed in ten cases shoulder-stripes abruj^tly trun- 

 cated at the lower end, with the anterior angle produced into 

 a tapering point, precisely as in the above dun Devonshire 



« Blyth, in ' Charlesworth's Mag. ' The Horse,' p. 205. 

 of Nat. Hist.,' vol iv., 1840, p. 83. I ■•* ' Journal As. Soc. of Bengal." vol. 



have also been assured by a breeder xxviii. 1860, p. 231. Martin on the 



Ihat this is the case. Horse, p. 205 



47 



One case is given by Martin, 



