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NATURAL HISTORY. 



Britain, and generally in Central Europe, the Ass has not given rise to distinct breeds like those 

 of the Horse, a fact which may be accounted for, as Mr. Darwin remarks, by the animal being kept 

 by poor persons who do not carefully match and select the young. Its small size in England and 

 Northern Europe is probably due far more to want of care in breeding than to cold, for in Western 

 India it is not much larger than a Newfoundland Dog, being usually not more than from twenty to 

 thirty inches high. 



The Ass varies greatly in colour, and its legs, especially the fore legs, are sometimes transversely 



DOMESTIC ASS. 



barred ; a fact which may be explained on the hypothesis of the reappearance of the attributes of the 

 parental form. " The stripes," Mr. Darwin says, " are believed to occur most frequently and to be 

 plainest on the legs of the Domestic Ass during early youth, as is apparently likewise the case with the 

 Horse. The shoulder-stripe, which is so eminently characteristic of the species, is nevertheless 

 variable in breadth, length, and manner of termination. I have measured a shoulder-stripe 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 



