Ixx QENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 



bred filly — every inch a horse in make — -had far more 

 stripes than the hybrid, and that the mane is represented 

 as lying to one side. Darwin, in coming to the conclusion 

 that the mare in question had been infected, seems to 

 have been largely influenced by two beliefs : (1) that 

 stripes are uncommon in Arabs ; and (2) that the mane in 

 the filly was upright. But extensive inquiries have con- 

 vinced me that stripes are not by any means uncommon 

 in Arabs. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt has recently been good 

 enough to present me with a high-caste Arab foal, show- 

 ing as distinct stripes in the region of the "knee " and 

 hock as in Norwegian dun-coloured ponies ; and, in 

 addition to a dorsal band, faint indications of markings 

 across the withers. That stripes are less common in 

 Arabs and their thoroughbred descendants is due, I be- 

 lieve, to Arabians disliking duns, which they say " are 

 only fit for Jews to ride." Were it certain the mane of 

 the filly was, as alleged by Sir Gore Ouseley's groom, 

 always upright, the case for "infection" would be well- 

 nigh complete. But the evidence in support of an up- 

 right mane in the filly is far from satisfactory. The 

 mane, as already mentioned, is represented as lying to 

 one side in Agasse's drawing. Even in the qnagga 

 hybrid the mane was not upright, it arched to one side, 

 as is the case, at least during winter, in all except one 

 of my zebra-horse hybrids, and in Lady Meux's three 

 horse-zebra hybrids. 



Darwin seems to have departed somewhat from his 

 original opinion about " infection." At least some 

 years before his death he had come to the conclusion 

 that telegony onl}^ rarely occurred, that it was a "very 

 occasional phenomenon." If in the general form— the 

 mane, tail, hoofs, and temperament — the subsequent foals 

 of Lord Morton\s mare were horses, and not at all like 

 the quagga hybrid, the stripes are the only evidence in 

 favour of infection. The stripes, however, if Agasse's 

 drawings may be trusted, are the stripes of a horse rather 

 than the stripes of a zebra or a qnngga, or a quago-a 

 hybrid, i. e. they seem to have been inherited from the 



