COLOUR. 243 



chiefly through Chanticleer. I may mention that chestnuts 

 are generally thought to be more impetuous than horses of 

 other colours. I do not think that this idea is worthy of 

 much weight. 



The colour of the skin itself is either black, pink (free 

 from pigment), or it may be partly black and partly pink in 

 patches. Although the large majority of grey and white 

 horses have black skins ; pink skin will have invariably white 

 hair, and will secrete (at the coronets) white hoofs. Black 

 skin will form dark-coloured horn, even when the coat is 

 white. Although, as I have just said, white horses may have 

 black skins ; we shall find that the skin of white markings 

 (stars, blazes, reaches, snips, stockings, etc.) on dark-coloured 

 horses is, as a rule, white. In fact, I venture to say that the 

 skin of white stockings is always pink, and consequently the 

 hoofs of these legs will be white ; provided, of course, that 

 the white hair is continued down to the coronet. In the 

 East we may not unfrequently see pink-skinned horses, 

 which, of course, are white, and which, according to my 

 experience, are much ''softer" in constitution than animals 

 with dark skins. This fact is, I think, chiefly owing to the 

 greater effect the rays of the sun have on skins which are free 

 from pigment, than on dark-coloured skins. Besides, as 

 human albinos are generally inferior, intellectually and 

 physically, to their fellows, we may suppose that the same 

 rule holds good with respect to these equine albinos. Ex- 

 periments show that dark-coloured hair is capable of sustain- 

 ing greater tension than blonde hair. Hence we have reason 

 to assume that the protective cuticle and horn (both of which, 

 like hair, consist of epithelium), secreted by dark-coloured 

 skin, are stronger than those formed by pink skin. 



R 2 



