MULES AXD lilXNIES. 85 



cultivated and more liiglily favored animal. Tlie zebra and 

 quagga are yet more potent in this strange power of trans- 

 mitting properties than even the ass ; for it is an established 

 fact, on well authenticated record, that a thorough-bred 

 mare having once produced a striped foal to a quagga, 

 continued for several successive generations, when bred to 

 thorough-bred horses and having no further connection 

 with the quagga, to produce striped offspring, the stripes 

 becoming fainter and fainter in each successive foal ; a 

 fact which has led, in connection with other circumstances, 

 some of the best French Physiologists to the conclusion 

 that a female, which has once borne a hybrid, becomes her- 

 self a hybrid, and can never again bear a perfect 

 animal of her own race ; a fact certainly worthy the con- 

 sideration of persons who, like the breeder of the mules 

 in the advertisement quoted above, stint mares of such blood 

 as Grey Eagle and Wagner to ^laltese jacks. Only imag- 

 ine their faces, should they after this breed the same mares 

 to a Lexington, a Monarch or a Eevenue, and find "the 

 progeny, on its appearance, long-eared, with a stripe along 

 its back and a bar across its shoulders. 



It is clear, then, that while in all hybrids of the horse and 

 ass, the latter gives the greater proportion both of exter- 

 nal and internal characteristics, it is determined by the sire, 

 not b}^ the dam, in what degree that excess shall exist; 

 and this principle will lead to a full understanding of how 

 mules may be bred to the best advantage. 



Thus, if we are breeding mules, on the spirit, courage, 

 temper and characteristics of the male ass, everything will 

 depend in the production of the like qualities in the prog- 

 en v : while so lono^ as the mare is sound, strono- enouo-h, 



,/ O 7 0/ 



bony enough, and roomy, it will matter very little, so far 

 as the characteristics of the young are concerned, whether 

 she be a Suffolk Punch, or as pure a thorough-bred as 



