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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
long and flowing in Welsh-hackney-Connemara crosses; but in a mixture 
of these five breeds (a cross between the black Arab-Shetland mare and a 
black Welsh-hackney-Connemara stallion) the mane is short and arches to 
one side of the neck, as in zebra-pony hybrids. 
In drawings of horses of the steppe type copied from the Madelaine 
Cave the mane is represented as short and upright (fig. 18), but in a 
drawing of a fine-headed horse (fig. 19) in the Combarelles Cave there is a 
suggestion of a mane long enough to arch to one side of the neck. It is 
hence possible that in the Welsh- hackney-Connemara-Shetland- Arab pony 
we have reproduced the kind of mane worn by the fine-headed, slender- 
limbed horses which lived in Europe during the Palseolithic period. 
Hitherto it has been generally assumed that the wild ancestors of the 
domestic horse were of a dun colour and more or less striped. Referring 
to the remote ancestors of horses, Prof. H. F. Osborn says we may imagine 
them “ as resembling a lot of small fox-terriers, in size only eleven inches, 
or two and three-quarters hands, at the withers, covered with short hair 
which may have had a brownish colour with lighter spots resembling the 
sunbeams falling through the leaves of trees, and thus protecting the little 
animals from observation.” * 
Sir Harry Johnston believes that the dark stripes in zebras and other 
recent Equidae represent the ground colour, f but as a rule it is assumed that 
the light stripes of zebras, the grey and reddish-brown colours of asses, and the 
yellow-dun colour of Prjevalsky’s horse represent the original ground colour. 
If the remote ancestor of the Equidse, as Prof. Osborn imagines, was of 
a dark colour relieved by light spots (or longitudinal white stripes like the 
young tapir), it is conceivable that in course of time spots united to 
form light irregular transverse bands such as one gets in zebra-hybrids; 
that later the light bands formed well-defined stripes such as occur in zebras, 
or, in the case of desert forms, blended with each other to give rise to a 
coat almost free of stripes such as we now find in the kiang and the wild 
horse of Mongolia. 
In Prjevalsky’s horse there is a narrow, not very pronounced dorsal 
band, and sometimes a faint shoulder stripe and indistinct bars on the legs ; 
but in domestic horses, bays as well as duns, there are sometimes vestiges 
of numerous stripes. In some domestic horses there is a broad dorsal band, 
in others a narrow dorsal band. J When the dorsal stripe is broad, the bars 
* The Century Magazine , vol. lxix., No. 1, 1904. 
t The Woburn Library, British Mammals , pp. 276-277, 1903. 
+ In zebra-hybrids there is often a narrow light stripe at each side of the dorsal band, 
continuous with light hairs at each side of the mane. 
