26 
Half-bred  Horses  for  Field  or  Road : 
more  desirable  it  is  to  couple  nature  with  freedom,  and  to  study 
the  probable  action  of  that  combination  with  a view  to  the 
utmost  practical  conformity.  How  important  the  application 
of  this  or  some  other  analogous  but  superior  or  better  fitted 
principle,  applied,  scientifically  and  practically,  to  the  elucida- 
tion of  the  phenomena  connected  with  the  recently  established 
— in  the  sense  of  fully  recognized — the  disastrous,  widely-extend- 
ing, and  now  certainly  hereditary  disease  in  horses  known  as 
Roaring.*  It  was,  I think,  Archbishop  Whately  who  finely 
•observed,  nothing  is  a trifle  that  can  illustrate  a general 
principle. 
In  that  charming  and  clever  work  of  fiction,  ‘ Handley  Cross,’ 
the  sporting  hero,  Mr.  Jorrocks,  recommends  his  attentive 
audience  to  “ choose  a mouse-coloured  dun,  for  it  has  the 
peculiar  advantage  of  looking  equally  well  all  the  year  round,'7 
and  as  an  additional  attraction  Mr.  Jorrocks  mentions  “ a 
black  list  down  the  back.”  I had  such  a one  by  birth,  a Tartar 
by  trade,  my  brother-in-law’s  Crimean  pack  pony  ; an  honest, 
pleasant,  nimble  pad.  Now  this  cheerful  quotation  sug- 
gests one  of  the  most  remarkable  theories  connected  with  the 
philosophy  of  horse-breeding,  illustrating  the  mysterious  laws 
of  unity  of  type,  correlation,  variation,  and  tendency  to  rever- 
sion. As  we  all  know  in  England,  spinal  stripes  occasion- 
ally appear  in  horses  of  all  colours  and  of  all  breeds ; bars  on 
the  legs  are  not  unfrequent,  more  especially  in  duns,  mouse- 
duns,  and  a wide  range  of  colour  between  brown  and  cream. 
In  one  known  case  in  a chestnut — a trace  of  shoulder  stripe  has 
been  even  seen  in  a bay.  Two  dun  ponies,  one  Welsh  and  the 
other  Devonshire,  each  had  three  parallel  stripes  on  either 
shoulder.  In  India  the  Kattywar  breed  is  generally  striped, 
spine,  legs  and  shoulders.  Bars  and  zebra-stripes  appear  on  the 
horses  of  all  parts  of  the  world,  even,  as  Darwin  observes,  on  the 
English  thoroughbred,  but  oftener  on  the  foal.  Mules  also  are 
frequently  striped  and  barred,  one  Indian  mule  appeared  like  a 
hybrid  zebra.  There  is,  scientifically  speaking,  no  chance  in 
all  this  ; the  theory  is  simple,  it  is  law,  or  the  action  and  reaction 
of  laws  such  as  those  we  have  cited.  The  original  stock,  the 
common  parents  from  whence  our  domestic  horse,  and  indeed 
all  horses  are  descended,  were  zebra-like — striped — all  horses 
are  descended  from  a striped  progenitor.! 
From  the  little  dun  horse  of  fiction  and  the  striped  horse  of 
science  we  now  turn  to  a little  black  brown,  happily  in  the 
flesh,  namely  Mr.  John  Grout’s  much-admired  hackney  stallion 
“ Fashion.”  The  winner  of  endless  prizes,  “ Fashion  ” is 
* Or  in  (lie  vegetable  kingdom  to  the  disease  in  the  cultivated  potato. 
t Sec  Darwin’s  ‘ Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication,’  chap.  ii. 
