DAPPLED AND STRIPED HORSES 69 



What is wanted is that some amateur with leisure and means 

 should undertake to photograph the dappling of the same Horse 

 as soon as this feature commences, and to photograph the same 

 Horse on both sides every year, after the Horse's change of coat. 

 So many leisured persons possess cameras, that this bit of work 

 ought to be an easy amusement. 



If many were to undertake this work, so much the better. And 

 if the Horse were closely clipped after being photographed, and 

 then re-photographed, we might be able to discover how far the 

 pigmentation of the skin coincides with the dappling of the hair.^ 

 We would then have some accurate data to build theories upon ; 

 and by comparing the dappling year by year, we might have the 

 revelation of some interesting facts. All these seem trivial things, 

 but from an evolutionary point of view they may be important. 

 However trivial a fact may appear at one time, it may one day 

 turn out of value. 



This any one can see for himself, viz., that the colour of the 

 clipped Horse is much lighter than it is before clipping. Part of 

 the darkness of the old coat may perhaps be put down to dirt, and 

 part to the action of light and weathering. In some cases, after 

 clipping, the surface shows traces of dappling which it did not 

 show before ; and in roan Horses the clipped surface is often darker, 

 or lighter. 



We seem to have more definite information about crustaceans, 

 fished out of the ocean from a depth of 3000 fathoms, than we have 

 of the changes in the colouring and marking of the Horse, an animal 

 which has been in daily use, in various ways, for thousands of years ! 



1 I saw a pink-white Horse in an omnibus. It had very little hair — indeed, it was 

 almost hairless ; and on its shoulder it had dark pigment-marks in the skin, like those 

 of the hair-marks on a grey dappled Horse. Moreover, it had dark circular spots in 

 many parts of the skin, like those of the Dalmatian Dog, the rest of the skin being of a 

 blush-rose colour. 



