My
son made a careful examination and sketch for me of a dun Belgian
cart-horse with a double stripe on each shoulder and with leg-stripes;
and a man, whom I can implicitly trust, has examined for me a small
dun Welch pony with THREE short 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
the 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 sometimes treble, is common; the side of the face, moreover, is
sometimes striped. The stripes are 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. 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.
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