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NATURE 



[OCIOUER 20, I9IO 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [The Editor does not hold himself responsible jor opinions 

 expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 A'o notice is talcen of anonymous communications.] 



Eaily Burial Customs m Egypt. 



As the subject of early burials has been raised in 

 Nature with reference to the results of my excavations 

 (pp. 4(51-2), I suppose some reply will be expected. 



The whole question lies in a nutshell. Many thousand 

 graves have been examined by one party of observers, and 

 certain results repeatedly found. Many thousand graves 

 have been examined by another party of observers, in other 

 localities, and such customs are not found. Many people 

 accept the results of both groups ; Dr. Elliott Smith will 

 only accept one group. To tal^e an exactly parallel case : 

 by one group of observers a dozen vases with figures of 

 boats have been found among these graves, but by the 

 other group (as I am informed) no examples have been 

 found. The negative evidence of the latter cannot prove 

 the uniformity of customs throughout the country. 



To repeat here the statements of most careful observa- 

 tions already published would be a waste of space and 

 attention. .All the possible causes named on p. 462 for 

 the accidental shifting of bones were fully before myself 

 and other observers, as we together examined skeletons in 

 unplundered graves ; the cases were considered at length 

 before shifting a single bone; and our most careful 

 observations of facts cannot be disproved by differences of 

 ancient custom in other places. 



The custom of unfleshing is well known in early Italy 

 and Europe, and practised to this day (with ceremonial 

 anthropophagy) in Africa. It is not surprising that it 

 should also be present in Egypt. Indeed, the references 

 to early anthropophagy in Egyptian ritual and myth would 

 point to its being known, even apart from any physical 

 evidence. 



This year, again, we found two unquestionable examples 

 showing the unfleshing and wrapping of every bone 

 separately in linen, without leaving anv flesh or skin 

 except a little on the skull. If the corpse had been buried 

 entire — as Dr. Elliott Smith suggests — and subsequently 

 plundered of valuables, no relatives would have then 

 honoured it by breaking it entirely to pieces to rebury it. 

 The unfleshing must have been a primary burial ceremony ; 

 and these bodies were of the highest nobles of the third 

 dynasty, and not merely of barbarous peoples. These were 

 published, and the specimens subsequently exhibited for a 

 month in London. I regret that Prof. Elliott Smith did 

 not examine thein, nor, indeed, honour our excavations by 

 a single inspection during the \'ears when he was in 

 Egypt. W. M. Flindei;s Petrie. 



Lord Morton's Quagga Hybrid and Origin of Dun 

 Horses. 



.May I be allowed to return to the two suggestions 

 made in Nature of September 15, viz. (i) that Lord 

 Morton's quagga hybrid was not a hybrid at all, and 

 (2) that the dun colour in horses is not a reversion? 



The first of these was based upon Prof. Cossar Ewarl's 

 statement in " The Penicuik E.xperiinents " that " in 

 their body colour none " of his zebra hybrids took after 

 their zebra sire, and on the theory, now well proved, that 

 chestnut is recessive to all other horse colours. It thus 

 seemed iiTijiossible that Lord Morton's hybrid, which, 

 according to its portrait, is undoubtedly a bay, could be 

 the progeny of a quagga iiorse and a chestnut mare. 



.Some years ago I saw half a dozen of Prof. Ewart's 

 zebra hybrids, and, although I did not observe them as 

 closely then as I would now, they all impressed me as 

 having the colour of their dams plus the striping they had 

 got froin their site the zebra. A few days ago Prof. 

 Ewart very kindly showed me over his stud again, and 

 showed me also the skins of soine zebra-horse hybrids, 

 and these skins follow the dams in colour. .\ brown skin 

 had a brown dam, a bay skin a bay dam, a chestnut skin 

 a chestnut dam, and so on. The chestnut skin was highly 



NO. 2138, VOL. 84] 



rufous, but it was still chestnut. There were also two 

 brown-looking skins, yellowish below and about the Hanks, 

 belonging to the progeny of a zebra mare and a horse, 

 which Prof. Ewart had not bred ; but in this case, I under- 

 stand, the colour of the horse is unknown. 



In support of the first contention, I said it was very 

 unlikely a quagga with whitish " points " and a chestnut 

 mare should have a foa! with dark points such as are 

 seen in the portrait of Lord Morton's hybrid. Prof. Ewart 

 points out that " crosses between zebras and ponies have, 

 usually, dark patches at the fetlocks." That may be; 

 but my point was that this would not occur if the dam 

 were a chestnut. Every other colour but chestnut might 

 be expected to give foals dark at the fetlocks. 



The second suggestion, that dun is not a reversion, was 

 based upon work of my own published last spring. At 

 the time I had only few data with regard to dun, but it 

 indicated dun to be dominant to chestnut, black, bay, and 

 brown, and recessive to grey. Since then I have collected 

 more than 200 matings concerning dun ; and leaving out 

 creams (which seem a variety of dun), dun roans, and 

 cases in which the colours of the second parent were un- 

 known, the following table shows the results of m:»ting 

 dun with itself and with the otiier five usual colours : — 



Colours of Parents Colours of Foals 



Chestnut Flack Bay hrown Dun Grey 



Dun X Chestnut... 3 — 4 — 9 — • 



Dun X Black ... — 4 — — 4 — 



Dun X Bay 4 3 21 3 S — 



Dun X Brown ... — — 2 7 8 — 



Dun X Dun ... i — I — 6 — 



Dun X Grey ... 3 4 7 5 16 10 



That dun is recessive to grey is shown by the fact that 

 it gets no grey foals unless mated with grey, while its 

 matings with the other colours, as well as with grey, 

 show that it is dominant to, i.e. contains, them all. In 

 addition, there are two matings of grey with grey pro- 

 ducing duns, and two of grey with black producing duns. 



It follows froiTt the above that a dun foal can only be 

 got when one parent is either dun, dun roan, or grey, 

 and that dun can be a reversion, if it can be called such, 

 to grey only. But it could not be expected that among 

 200 cases there would be no exceptions to the rule. How- 

 ever, I have found only four in which a dun foal had 

 neither a dun nor a grey nor a dun roan parent. But 

 these exceptions help to emphasise the rule, for in each 

 of them one of the two parents was a bay — the second 

 parent being brown in three cases and bay in one — and 

 bay and dun are occasionally mistaken for each other. 

 These cases may, therefore, be taken as misdescriptions. 



The Przewalsky horse is a case in point. He has been 

 called dun ; but he is not such. He is a bay, a sandy 

 bay, with a large bright nostril patch such as is found 

 among light bay, sandy bay, and " yellow bay " Clydes- 

 dales. 



I have just come upon the following in Darwin's 

 " .Animals and Plants under Domestication " which is 

 apropos of the present discussion : — " I have endeavoured, 

 but with poor success, to discover whether duns, which 

 are so much oftener striped than other coloured horses, 

 are ever produced from the crossing of two horses, neither 

 of which arc duns. Most persons to whom I have applied 

 believe that one parent must be a dun." 



James \\'ilson. 



Royal College of Science, Dublin, October 3. 



The colour of Lord Morton's hybrid may not suggest 

 its mi.xed origin, but this is sufficiently indicated by the 

 mane, tail, and conformation. 



.\ white-legged Iceland pony produced a brown hybrid 

 with dark " points " to a Burchell zebra (Matopo) white 

 below the knees and hocks, and a chestnut Iceland mare 

 produced a bay hybrid to a Przewalsky stallion. Why 

 should not a chestnut mare produce a bay-dun or bay, 

 hybrid to a white-legged quagga? 



Lord Morton's quagga was more a bay than a dun, and 

 there are good reasons for assuming that both the quagga 

 and the Burchell zebras are descended from ancestors in 

 colour like the wild horse still surviving in Mongolia. 

 Of three zebra hjbrids out of a chestnut mare, two are 



