THE BIKTH OP A ZEBKA HYBRID. 15 



between the eyes towards the nostrils are other bands of a 

 similar width and colour, which serve to decorate the front 

 and sides of the face. These stripes eventually lose them- 

 selves in the rich brown hair above the level of the nostrils. 

 The somewhat lozenge-shaped space in the centre of the 

 forehead, i. e. the space between the lateral curved bands 

 just mentioned and the loops above the eyes, is occupied 

 by a U-shaped loop, one end of which bends upwards, 

 while the other, accompanied by a nearly mesial stripe, 

 runs for some distance down the middle of the face. 

 Similar bands (twelve dark and twelve light) extend from 

 the base of the ear obliquely downwards over the jaw. 

 The greater part of the head is thus tattooed with bright- 

 coloured narrow stripes arranged in a quite unique fashion. 

 In having this complex arrangement of narrow dark and 

 light ba.nds over the face, the hybrid differs in a striking- 

 manner from his sire, but approaches some of the East 

 African and Somali zebras. 



The ears, though zebra-like in shape, are not, as in the 

 zebra, distinctly banded. In a light bay Shetland pony in 

 my possession the tip of the ear is white as in the zebra, 

 but in Romulus the upper third of the ear is of a dark 

 brown colour. This colour extends as a broad band 

 towards the base, where it is interrupted by tan-coloured 

 bauds having in the main a transverse direction. The 

 ear is lined with a thick coating of long, fine, bright yellow 

 hair. In a front view the light- coloured ears, with the 

 dark upright mane between them, are almost as conspicuous 

 as the corresponding structures in the zebra. 



As is usually the case in zebras, a dark band extends 

 downwards from the withers, to bifurcate at the shoulder, 

 the one limb running forwards to the chest, the other 

 backwards behind the elbow. In front of this, which may 

 be known as the shoulder stripe, are a number of cervical 

 stripes, some of which blend as they run across the neck. 

 At the root of the mane, between the shoulder stripe and 

 the occipital crest, over twenty dark bands alternate with 

 a corresponding number of light ones. The latter are 



