THE CLASSES OF HORSES 47 



colors, black is dominant to cliestnnt and recessive to all others, 

 bay is dominant to chestnut and black and recessive to roan, 

 gray and dun ^ ; roan appears to be a pattern independent of the 

 kind of pigment and dominant to all other colors.- 



The standing of different colors will depend, in the case of 

 many of them, upon the class of the horse in question. In gen- 

 eral the different shades of hay may be considered as the best all- 

 round color. Bay has been referred to as " everyman's '' color. 



Brown is also a staple color like bay. 



Chestnut, especially the golden and red, is one of the most 

 attractive colors and when accompanied by white markings, as 

 chestnut is quite liable to be, presents an extremely flashy appear- 

 ance. This is one of the most popular colors in high-class harness 

 and saddle horses. 



Black, while most popular in fiction, is in fact not a good 

 color for selling. It is objected to chiefly on the ground that it 

 is not often fast black but fades and sunburns badly in hot 

 weather; the sooty more so than the jet black. Black is also 

 objectionable on account of tlie flecked appearance which it 

 acquires as the horse is warmed up. 'No matter how carefully 

 the coat is gi-oomed, every hair that is turned appears as a dirty, 

 gray fleck, as soon as the sweat dries. Black harness horses are 

 commonly cross-matched with grays. The chief specific demand 

 for black horses comes from undertakers. 



Gray is the color most in demand in the draft classes, al- 

 though frequently discriminated against in horses of any other 

 type. The preference for grays is stated, by draft horse buyers, 

 to be due to the fact that they experience less difliculty in match- 

 ing up a team of from two to six grays tlian in the case of any 

 other color. This may be accounted for to some extent by the 

 fact that gray is the predominating color in the draft breed which 

 outnumbers all other draft breeds combined, in this country. It 

 would seem at first thought that bays could be more easily 

 matched than grays. But bays are most frequently marked with 

 white, which necessitates a matching of markings as well as of 

 shade. Grays, furthermore, appear to harmonize better with the 



1. Anderson, Kentucky A^ricnltiiral Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 180. 



2. Wentworth, Color Inheritance in the Horse. 



