DOMESTICATED MAMMALS AND THEIR USES 



235 



p. 140), and it is probable that in colour and markings the ancestral 

 forms harmonized more or less with their surroundings. Darwin 

 long ago suggested that the bars and stripes so often present on 

 various parts of the bodies of domesticated horses may be a case 

 of atavism, i.e. "reversion" or "throw back" to ancestral characters. 

 Cossar Ewart has greatly elaborated and adduced fresh evidence 

 in support of this view ; in his opinion primeval horses were clothed 



in " striped khaki ", with short 

 forelock and hog -mane (as in 



Fig. 1170. Head of " Matopo ", Prof. Cossar Ewart's Zebra (Equus Burchelli], and of a Norwegian Pony 



the prehistoric drawings). Fig. 1170, which Professor Ewart has 

 kindly permitted me to borrow from his book (The Penycuik Ex- 

 periments), shows how the head-stripes possessed by a particular 

 Norwegian pony compare with those on the head of a Zebra, an 

 animal which might almost be described as a striped and hog- 

 maned latter-day horse. The following quotation is taken from 

 the book just mentioned: "We can only guess as to the colour of 

 the remote ancestor of the horse, but nearly all who have made a 

 special study of the subject have come to the conclusion that the 



