ON ZHBRA-HORSE HYBRIDS. 61 
for much, one can understand why they almost reach their full 
size at birth. Foals are given to straying in all directions, and 
unless they hear and at once recognize the call of their respective 
dams, and the direction from which the sound comes, their 
chances of surviving in a wild state would be greatly reduced. 
At birth, the ears of Romulus were longer than in his dam, and 
only slightly shorter than in his sire. In the case of Remus they 
were the same length as in his dam, viz. six inches along the 
inner aspect. 
The eyes in Biddy’s foal are hazel-coloured and gazelle-like 
in their mildness, and the eyelashes are particularly long and 
curved. The mane was at first made up of soft hairs, which bent 
over to the right side. The mane, however, soon assumed an 
upright position, and now, when nearly eight months old, it 
consists of nearly erect but not very stiff hairs. It looks as if 
the mane will always be as upright and as short as in his sire. 
The tail contains fewer hairs than any of the other hybrids, and 
has three bars across the root. On the other hand, unlike 
ordinary Mules, there are chestnuts on the hind legs as well as 
on the fore. The front chestnuts are large, level with the skin, 
and Zebra-like; the hind chestnuts are raised above the level of 
the skin, and, though narrow and only half an inch in length, are 
Horse-like. That the Zebras and Asses have no chestnuts on 
the hind legs may perhaps be due to the absence of chestnuts in 
their remote ancestors; their absence points, I think, to Asses 
and Zebras having sprung from a different ancestor (perhaps 
Hipparion) than the Horses, which may have descended straight 
from Protohippus. If Remus survives, he may reach a height of 
nearly 14 hands, and be the most handsome and fleetest of all 
the present crop of hybrids. 
As in the case of Gebra foals, the hair over the back and hind 
quarters of Remus soon increased in length, and formed a thick 
woolly covering. The hair of the first coat usually falls off 
soonest from the face and neck, then from the legs, especially at 
the knees and above and below the hocks. Some of the hair was 
shed from the face by the end of the first month, but there was 
still some left on the muzzle and brow at the end of the third 
month, and the legs retained some of the foal’s coat at the end 
of the fourth month. The second coat, which was completed by 
