The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication

COLD-BREEDS MUCH MODIFIED BY SELECTION-COLOURS OF THE HORSE-DAPPLING-DARK STRIPES ON THE SPINE, LEGS, SHOULDERS, AND FO

SHOULDER- STRIPES-SHOULDER-STRIPES

[101] Looking only to the native ponies of Great Britain, those of the Shetland Isles, Wales, the New Forest, and Devonshire are distinguishable; and so it is with each separate island in the great Malay archipelago.[102] Some of the breeds present great differences in size, shape of ears, length of man

erts that not unfrequently there are nineteen on each side, the additional one being always the posterior rib. I have seen several notices of variations in the bones of the leg; thus Mr. Price[105] speaks of an additional bone in the hock, and of certain abnormal appearances between the tibia and astragalus, as quite common in Irish horses, and not due to disease. Horses have often been observed, according to M. Gaudry,[106] to possess a trapezium and a rudiment of a fifth metacarpal bone, so that "one sees appearing by monstrosity, in the foot of the horse, s

ecords.[108] Even in so fleeting a character as colour, Hofacker[109] found that, out of two hundred and sixteen cases in which horses of the same colour were paired, only eleven pairs produced foals of a quite different colour. As Professor Low[110] has remarked, the E

orse existed[113] during the later tertiary periods, and as Rütimeyer found differences in the size and form of the skull in the earliest known domesticated horses,[114] we ought not to feel sure that all our breeds have descended from a single species. As we see that the savages of North and South America easily reclaim the feral horses, there is no improbability in savages in various quarters of the world having domesticated more than one native

coast of Virginia, ponies like those of the Shetland Islands, which are believed to have originated through exposure to unfavourable conditions. The Puno ponies, which inhabit the lofty regions of the Cordillera, are, as I hear from Mr. D. Forbes, strange little creatures, very unlike their Spanish progenitors. Further south, in the Falkland Islands, the offspring of the horses imported in 1764 have already so much deteriorated in size[117] and strength that they are unfitted for catching wild cattle with the lasso; so that fresh horses have to be brought for this purpose from La Plata at a great expense. The reduced size of the horses bred on both southern and northern islands, and on several mountain-chains, can hardly have been caused by the cold, as a similar reduction has occurred on the Virginian and Mediterranean islands. The horse can withstand intense col

us to the horse than heat or cold. In the Falkland Islands, horses suffer much from the dampness; and this same circumstance may perhaps partly account for the singular fact that to the eastward of the Bay of Bengal,[120] over an

tion of individual differences. No doubt semi-monstrous breeds might have been formed: thus Mr. Waterton records[122] the case of a mare which produced successively three foals without tails; so that a tailless race might have been formed like the tailless races of dogs and cats. A Russian breed of horses is said to have frizzled hair, a

-horses, could have conceived that they were the result of the union of the Arab horse and African mare?" The improvement is so marked that in running for the Goodwood Cup "the first descendants of Arabian, Turkish, and Persian horses, are allowed a discount of 18 lbs. weight; and when both parents are of these countries a discount of 36 lbs."[124] It is notorious that the Arabs have long been as careful about the pedigree of their horses as we are, and this implies great and continued care in breeding. Seeing what has been done in England by careful breeding, can we doubt that the Arabs must likewise have produced du

ay-horses, cobs, and ponies, are all occasionally dappled,[128] in the same manner as is so conspicuous with grey horses. This fact does not throw any clear light on the colouring of the aboriginal horse, but is a case of analogous variation, for even asses are sometimes dappled, and I have seen, in the British Museum, a hybrid from the ass and zebra dappled on its hinder quarters. By the expression analogous variation (and it is one that I shall often have occasion to use) I mean a variation occurring in a species or variety which resembles a normal character in another and distinct species or variety. Analogous variations may arise, as will be explained in a future chapter, from two or more forms with a similar constitution having bee

Pony, with shoulder,

gs, and with four parallel stripes on each shoulder. Of these four stripes the posterior one was very minute and faint; the anterior one, on the other hand, was long and broad, but interrupted in the middle, and truncated at its lower extremity, with the anterior angle produced into a long tapering point. I mention this latter fact because the shoulder-stripe of the ass occasionally presents exactly the same appearance. I have had an outline and description sent to me of a small, purely-bred, light fallow-dun Welch pony, with a spinal stripe, a single transverse stripe on each leg, and three shoulder-stripes; the posterior stripe corresponding with that on the shoulder of the ass was the longest, whilst the two anterior parallel stripes, arising from the mane, decreased in length, in a reversed manner as compared with the shoulder-stripes on the above-described Devonshire pony. I have seen a bright fallow-dun, strong cob, with its front legs transversely barred on the under sides in the most conspicuous manner; also a dark-leaden mouse-coloured pony with similar leg stripes, but much less conspicuous; also a bright fallow

sverse bars on the legs; but almost the whole body was marked with very narrow dark stripes, in most parts so obscure as to be visible only in certain lights, like the stripes which may be seen on black kittens. These stripes were distinct on the hind-quarters, where they diverged from the spine, and pointed a little forwards; many of them as they diverged from the spine became a little branched, exactly in the same manner as in some zebrine species. The stripes were plain

e hind-legs of one pony; only a few of them exhibited traces of shoulder-stripes; but I have heard of a cob imported from Norway which had the shoulder as well as the other stripes well developed. Colonel Ham. Smith[131] alludes to dun-horses with the spinal stripe in the Sierras of Spain; and the horses originally derived from Spain, in some parts

s is not considered pure. Colonel Poole believes that all the duns have the spinal stripe, the leg-stripes are generally present, and he thinks that about half the horses have the shoulder-stripe; this stripe is sometimes double or treble on both shoulders. Colonel Poole has often seen stripes on the cheeks and sides of the nose. He has seen stripes on the grey and bay Kattywars when first foaled, but they soon faded away. I have received other accounts of cream-coloured, bay, brown, and grey Kattywar horses being stripe

a wide range of tint from cream to dusky black), and rarely when of bay, grey, and chesnut shades, have the several above-specified strip

which are duns. Most persons to whom I have applied believe that one parent must be a dun; and it is generally asserted, that, when this is the case, the dun-colour and the stripes are strongly inherited.[134] One case has fallen under my own observation o

r accounts confirm this fading of the stripes in old horses in India. One writer, on the other hand, states that colts are often born without stripes, but that they appear as the colt grows older. Three authorities affirm that in Norway the stripes are less plain in the foal than in the adult. Perhaps there is no fixed rule. In the case described by me of the young foal which was narrowly striped over nearly all its body, there was no doubt

as it characterises the other seven or eight species of the genus. It is remarkable that so trifling a character as the shoulder-stripe being double or triple should occur in such different breeds as Welch and Devonshire ponies, the Shan pony, heavy cart-horses, light South American horses, and the lanky Kattywar breed. Colonel Hamilton Smith believes that one of his five supposed primitive stocks was dun-coloured and striped

inal stripe was preserved in the royal parks in Prussia. I hear from Hungary that the inhabitants of that country look at the duns with a spinal stripe as the aboriginal stock, and so it is in Norway. Dun-coloured ponies are not rare in the mountainous parts of Devonshire, Wales, and Scotland, where the aboriginal breed would have had the best chance of being preserved. In South America in the time of Aza

oured and marked. But the appearance of the stripes on the various breeds of the horse, when of a dun-colour, does not afford nearly such good evidence of their descent from a single primitive stock as in the case of the pigeon; because no certainly wild horse is known as a standard of comparison; because the stripes when they do appear are variable in character; because there is far from sufficient evidence of the appearance of the stripes from the crossing of distinct breeds; and lastly, because all the

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; secondly, an Arab breed reserved exclusively for the saddle; thirdly, a stouter animal used for ploughing and various purposes; and lastly, the large Damascus breed, with a peculiarly long body and ears. In this country, and generally in Central Europe, though the ass is by no means uniform in appearance, it has not given rise to distinct breeds like those of the horse. This may probably be accounted for by the animal being kept chiefly by poor persons, who do not rear large numbers, nor carefully match and select the young. For, as we shall see in a

t frequently and to be plainest on the legs of the domestic ass during early youth,[141] as is apparently likewise the case with the horse. The shoulder-stripe, which is so eminently characteristic of the species, is nevertheless variable in breadth, length, and manner of termination. I have measured a shoulder-stripe four times as broad as another; and some more than twice as long as others. In one light-grey ass the shoulder-stripe was only six inches in length, and as thin as a piece of string; and in another animal of the same colour there was only a dusky shade representing a stripe.

angular bending of the shoulder-stripe, I had seen enough of the stripes in the various equine species to feel convinced that even a character so unimportant as this had a distinct meaning, and was thus led to attend to the subject. I now find that in the Asinus Burchellii and quagga, the stripe which corresponds with the shoulder-stripe of the ass, as well as some of the stripes on the neck, bifurcate, and that some of those near the shoulder have their extremities angularly bent backwards. The forking and angular bending of the stripes on the shoulders apparently stand in relation with the changed direction of the nearly upright stripes on the sides of the body a