HYBRIDS OF HORSE AND ZEBRA. 1 65 



SECTION B. VERTEBRATA. 



Wednesday, 24 Augtist, 3 p.m. 



Chairman, The President, and for papers 2 — 4 the Rt. Hon. 

 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart, M.P. 



I. Ouelques donn^es sur le syst£me nerveux 



de l'Amphioxus. 



By Profs. Heymans and Van der Stricht. 



No remarks were made. 



2. Demonstration on "Hybrids" (Horse and Zebra). 



( JVit/i Lantern Slides.) 



By Prof. J. C. Ewart, F.R.S. 



Prof. Ewart exhibited slides showing photographs of Hybrids 

 between the Horse (female) and the Burchell Zebra (male). 



Hon. W. Rothschild made some remarks on a few other 

 hybrids of the Zebra and Horse and then dilated upon certain 

 differences between the various species of Zebras. 



Dr DiXEY said that he had had the advantage of seeing Pro- 

 fessor Ewart's actual stud, and could affirm that the points to which 

 Prof Ewart had drawn attention were easily recognisable in the 

 hybrids themselves. In one respect the photographs were neces- 

 sarily inadequate, — they could not show the peculiarities of gait 

 and action which formed interesting features in the comparison of 

 the living specimens. He wished to point out that Prof Ewart's 

 interpretation of the markings of some of his hybrids as reversionary, 

 should it turn out to be well grounded, would not stand alone ; for 

 it agreed with one result of Darwin's famous experiments in the 

 crossing of pigeons, and also with a more recent series of elaborate 

 researches conducted by Standfuss in Zurich. The latter investi- 

 gator, working with insects, had repeatedly found that the hybrid 

 progeny of his crossings " threw back " in a manner seemingly 

 analogous to the behaviour of Prof Ewart's h}'brid colts. This 

 was attributed by Standfuss himself to the " prepotency of the 

 phylogenetically older" of the two parent species. But though 

 Standfuss did not in these cases admit reversion in so many words, 

 it was significant that in certain instances he affirmed the occur- 

 rence of characters in his hybrids which must have belonged to an 



