Page - 172 - in The Origin of Species

172 ORIGIN OF SPECIES with a double stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes; I have myself seen a dun Devonshire pony, and a small dun Welsh pony has been carefully described to me, both with three parallel stripes on each shoulder. In the north-west part of India the Kattywar breed of horses is so generally striped, that, as I hear from Colonel Poole, who examined this breed for the Indian Government, a horse without stripes is not considered as purely-bred. The spine is always striped; the legs are generally barred; and the shoulder-stripe, which is sometimes double and some- times treble, is common; the side of the face, moreover, is sometimes striped. The stripes are often plainest in the foal ; and sometimes quite disappear in old horses. Colonel Poole has seen both gray and bay Kattywar horses striped when first foaled. I have also reason to suspect, from information given me by Mr. W. W. Edwards, that with the English race-horse the spinal stripe is much commoner in the foal than in the full-grown animal. I have myself recently bred a foal from a bay mare (offspring of a Turkoman horse and a Flemish mare) by a bay English race-horse; this foal when a week old was marked on its hinder quarters and on its forehead with numerous, very narrow, dark, zebra-like bars, and its legs were feebly striped: all the stripes soon disap- peared completely. Without here entering on further details, I may state that I have collected cases of leg and shoulder stripes in horses of very different breeds in various countries from Britain to Eastern China; and from Norway in the north to the Malay Archipelago in the south. In all parts of the world these stripes occur far oftenest in duns and mouse- duns; by the term dun a large range of colour is included, from one between brown and black to a close approach to cream-colour. I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written on this subject, believes that the several breeds of the horse are descended from several aboriginal species—one of which, the dun, was striped; and that the above-described appear- ances are all due to ancient crosses with the dun stock. But this view may be safely rejected ; for it is highly improbable that the heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welsh ponies, Norwegian cobs, the lanky Kattywar race, &c., inhabiting the most dis-