CnAP. V. ANALOGOUS VAEIATIONS. 163 



I am uwaro tliat Colonel Hamilton Smith, who lias written 

 on this subject, believes that the several breeds of the horse 

 are descended from several abori^^inal species — one of which, 

 the dun, was striped ; and that the above-described appear- 

 ances are all due to ancient crosses with the dun stock. But 

 this view may be safely rejected ; for it is highly improbable 

 that the heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welsh ponies, cobs, the lanky 

 Kattywar race, etc., inhabiting the most distant parts of the 

 world, should all have been crossed with one supposed aborigi- 

 nal stock. 



Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several species 

 of the horse-genus. lloUin asserts that the common mule 

 from the ass and horse is particularly apt to have bars on its 

 legs ; according to Mr. Gosse, in certain parts of the United 

 States about nine out of ten mules have striped legs. I once 

 saw a mule with its legs so much striped that any one might 

 have thought that it was a hybrid-zebra ; and Mr. W. C. Mar- 

 tin, in his excellent treatise on the horse, has given a figure of 

 a similar mule. In four colored draAvings, which I have seen, 

 of hybrids between the ass and zebra, the legs were much more 

 plainly barred tlian the rest of the body ; and in one of them 

 there was a double shoulder-stripe. In Lord Morton's famous 

 hybrid from a chestnut mare and male quagga, the hybrid, and 

 even the pure offspring subsequently produced from the mare 

 l)y a black Araljian sire, were much more plainly barred across 

 the legs than is even the pure quagga. Lastly, and this is an- 

 other most remarkable case, a hybrid has been figured by Dr. 

 Gray (and he informs me tliat he knows of a second case) from 

 the ass and the hemionus ; and this hybrid, though the ass 

 only occasionally has stripes on his legs and the hemionus has 

 none and has not even a shoulder-stripe, nevertheless had all 

 four legs barred, and had throe short shoulder-stripes, like those 

 on tlie dun Devonshire and Welsh ponies, and even had some 

 zebra-like stripes on the sides of its face. With respect to 

 this last fact, I was so convinced that not even a stripe of 

 color appears from what is commonly called chance, that I was 

 led solel}' from the occurrence of the face-stripes on this hybrid 

 from the ass and hemionus to ask Colonel Poole whether such 

 face-stripes ever occurred in the eminently striped Kattywar 

 l)reed of horses, and was, as we have seen, answered in the 

 adirmative. 



AVhat now arc we to say to these several facts ? We sec 

 several very distinct species of the horse-genus becoming, by 



