130 
CROSS BREEDING. 
A COMMUNICATION OF A SINGULAR FACT IN NATURAL HISTORY, 
BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF MORTON, F.R.S., 
IN A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE PRESIDENT.* 
[Read November 30th, 1830.] 
My dear Sir, — I YESTERDAY had an opportunity of observing a 
singular fact in natural history, which you may, perhaps, deem not 
unworthy of being communicated to the Royal Society. 
Some years ago, I was desirous of trying the experiment of do- 
mesticating the quagga, and endeavoured to procure some animals 
of that species. I obtained a male, but being disappointed of a fe- 
male, I tried to breed from the male quagga and a young chestnut 
mare, seven-eighths Arabian blood, and which had never been 
bred from ; the result was, the production of a female hybrid, now 
five years old, and bearing, both in her form and colour, very de- 
cided indications of her mixed origin. I subsequently parted with 
the seven-eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore Ouseley, who has 
bred from her by a fine black Arabian horse. I yesterday ex- 
amined the produce, namely, a two-year-old filly, and a year-old 
colt : they have the character of the Arabian breed as decidedly as 
can be expected where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian, 
and they are fine specimens of that breed ; but, both in their colour 
and in the hair of their manes, they have a striking resemblance to 
the quagga. Their colour is bay, marked more or less like a 
quagga, in a darker tint ; both are distinguished by the dark line 
along the ridge of the back, the dark stripes across the forehead, 
and the dark bars across the back parts of their legs. The stripes 
across the forehead of the colt are confined to the withers, and 
to the part of the neck next to them ; those on the filly cover 
nearly the whole of the neck and back, as far as the flanks. The 
colour of her coat on the neck, adjoining to the mane, is pale, and 
approaching to dun, rendering the stripes there more conspicuous 
than those on the colt. The same pale tint appears in a less de- 
gree on the rump, and in this circumstance of the dun tint, also, 
she resembles the quagga. 
The colt and filly were taken up from grass for my inspection ; 
and owing to the present state of their coats I could not ascertain 
whether they bear any indications of the spots on the rump, the 
* This “ Communication,” extracted from the “ Transactions ” of the 
Royal Society, is the record referred to by Mr. Goodwin, in his paper “ On 
the Horses of England,” in our last number. 
