TELBGONy AND KEVEUSION. 115 



tained tlie dorsal band and two stripes across eacli shoulder. 

 It may be well to point out that both the dam and the sire 

 may have been striped at birth, and that had they been 

 bay instead of black, some of the stripes might have been 

 visible throughout life.* 



Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt has been good enough to 

 send me some particulars as to his 1897 crop of Arab foals. 

 Mr. Blunt has this year ten foals from pure Ai-ab mares, 

 all the foals having as their sire Mesaoud, a bright 

 chestnut Arab with four white legs and a blaze. Of seven 

 bay mares, five had bay foals while two had chestnut foals. 

 Of the five baj^ foals two had a dorsal band. One of the 

 mares which, like the sire, is a chestnut had a chestnut 

 foal with a dorsal band. Of the two remaining mares one 

 is grey, the other white; the grey mare had a bay foal, the 

 white a chestnut, showing distinct zebra markings inside 

 the forearms, less distinct markings above the hocks, and 

 a hardly perceptible line down the spine. Mr. Bkmt in- 

 forms me that the dam of this striped colt is absolutely 

 pure white (and, like the sire, of the most perfect Arab 

 type) ; that he has noticed that stripes occur most fre- 

 quently in foals from white parents, but that the stripes do 

 not outlast the second year, or at longest the third. The 

 desert Arabs seem to dislike dun-coloured horses, and, pro- 

 bably owing to the duns being weeded out, stripes are 

 comparatively rare in desert-bred high-caste Arabians. 

 Nevertheless four [i.e. 40 per cent.) of Mr. Blnnt's 1897 

 Arab foals had a dorsal band, and one in addition stripes 

 on both the fore and hind legs. It is especially interesting 

 to note that all the ten foals were either bay or chestnut. 

 The foals of grey horses are never born grey ; with few 

 exceptions, foals at birth belong to the red or mouse dun 

 series of colours — are bay, chestnut, or brown. If both 

 parents are of the same colour and strain and inbred, the 

 foals may closely resemble the parents even if they are 

 black or cream-coloured or piebald. 



* Is it possible that we owe our black horses to the blending of dark 

 ancestral stripes ? 



