164 LAWS OF VARIATION. Chap. V. 



bay horse. My son made a careful examination and 

 sketch for me of a dun Belgian cart-horse with a double 

 stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes ; and a man, 

 whom I can implicitly trust, has examined for me a 

 small dun Welch pony with three short parallel stripes 

 on each shoulder. 



In the north-west part of India the Kattywar breed 

 of horses is so generally striped, that, as I hear from 

 Colonel Poole, who examined the breed for the Indian 

 Government, a horse without stripes is not considered as 

 purely-bred. The spine is always striped ; the legs are 

 generally barred ; and the shoulder-stripe, which is some- 

 times double and sometimes treble, is common ; the side 

 of the face, moreover, is sometimes striped. The stripes 

 are plainest in the foal ; and sometimes quite disappear 

 in old horses. Colonel Poole has seen both gray and 

 bay Kattywar horses striped when first foaled. I 

 have, also, reason to suspect, from information given 

 me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the English race- 

 horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in the foal 

 than in the full-grown animal. Without here entering 

 on further details, I may state that I have collected cases 

 of leg and shoulder stripes in horses of very different 

 breeds, in various countries from Britain to Eastern 

 China; and from Norway in the north to the Malay 

 Archipelago in the south. In all parts of the world 

 these stripes occur far oftenest in duns and mouse-duns ; 

 by the term dun a large range of colour is included, 

 from one between brown and black to a close approach 

 to cream-colour. 



I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has 

 written on this subject, believes that the several breeds 

 of the horse have descended from several aboriginal 

 species — one of which, the dun, was striped ; and that 

 the above-described appearances are all due to ancient 



