42 



INHERITANCE. 



Chap. XIII. 



species. There is reason to believe that the foal is frequently more 

 plainly striped on the legs than the adult animal. As with the horse, 

 I have not acquired any distinct evidence that the crossing of differently- 

 coloured varieties of the ass brings out the stripes. 



But now let us turn to the result of crossing the horse and ass. Although 

 mules are not nearly so numerous in England as asses, I have seen a much 

 greater number with striped legs, and with the stripes far more conspicuous 

 than in either parent-form. Such mules are generally light-coloured 

 and might be called fallow-duns. The shoulder-stripe in one instance 

 was deeply forked at the extremity, and in another instance was double 

 though united in the middle. Mr. Martin gives a figure of a Spanish 

 mule with strong zebra-like marks on its legs, 30 and remarks, that mules 

 are particularly liable to be thus striped on their legs. In South America 

 acc6rding to Eoulin, 31 such stripes are more frequent and conspicuous in 

 the mule than in the ass. In the United States, Mr. Gosse, 32 speaking of 

 these animals, says, " that in a great number, perhaps in nine out of every 

 ten, the legs are banded with transverse dark stripes." 



Many years ago I saw in the Zoological Gardens a curious triple hybrid, 

 from a bay mare, by a hybrid from a male ass and female zebra. This 

 animal when old had hardly any stripes; but I was assured by the 

 superintendent, that when young it had shoulder-stripes, and faint stripes 

 on its flanks and legs. I mention this case more especially as an instance 

 of the stripes being much plainer during youth than in old age. 



As the zebra has such conspicuously striped legs, it might have been 

 expected that the hybrids from this animal and the common ass would 

 have had their legs in some degree striped ; but it appears from the 

 figures given in Dr. Gray's ' Knowsley Gleanings/ and still more plainly 

 from that given by Geoffroy and F. Cuvier, 33 that the legs are much 

 more conspicuously striped than the rest of the body; and this fact is 

 intelligible only on the belief that the ass aids in giving, 

 power of reversion, this character to its hybrid offspring. 



The quagga is banded over the whole front part of its body like a zebra, 

 but has no stripes on its legs, or mere traces of them. But in the famous 

 hybrid bred by Lord Morton, 34 from a chesnut, nearly purely-bred, Arabian 

 mare, by a male quagga, the stripes were "more strongly defined and 

 darker than those on the legs of the quagga." The mare was subse- 

 quently put to a black Arabian horse, and bore two colts, both of which, 

 as formerly stated, were plainly striped on the legs, and one of them 

 likewise had stripes on .the neck and body. 



The Asinus Indicus 35 is characterised by a spinal stripe, without shoulder 



through the 



' History of the Horse/ p. 212. 



34 i 



„ 7 x Philosoph. Transact./ 1821, p. 20. 



31 ' Mem. presenters par divers Savans 35 Sclater, in^'Proc. Zoolog. Soc, 



a l'Acad. Eoyale/ torn. vi. 1835, p. 1862, p. 163 : this species is the Ghor- 



Khur of N.W. India, and has often 

 been called the Hemionus of Pallas. 

 See, also, Mr. Blyth's excellent paper to 

 < Journ. of Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, vol. 



338. 



32 * Letters from Alabama/ 1859, p. 



280. 



& ' Hist. Nat, des Mammiferes/ 1820, 



torn, i. 



xxviii., 1860, p. 229. 



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