I am aware that Colonel Hamilton Smith, who has written on this
subject, believes that the several breeds of the horse have descended
from several aboriginal species--one of which, the dun, was striped;
and that the above-described appearances are all due to ancient
crosses with the dun stock. But I am not at all satisfied with this
theory, and should be loth to apply it to breeds so distinct as the
heavy Belgian cart-horse, Welch ponies, cobs, the lanky Kattywar race,
etc., inhabiting the most distant parts of the world.
Now let us turn to the effects of crossing the several species of the
horse-genus. Rollin asserts, that the common mule from the ass and
horse is particularly apt to have bars on its legs. I once saw a mule
with its legs so much striped that any one at first would have thought
that it must have been the product of a zebra; and Mr. W. C. Martin,
in his excellent treatise on the horse, has given a figure of a
similar mule. In four coloured drawings, which I have seen, of hybrids
between the ass and zebra, the legs were much more plainly barred than
the rest of the body; and in one of them there was a double
shoulder-stripe. In Lord Moreton's famous hybrid from a chestnut mare
and male quagga, the hybrid, and even the pure offspring subsequently
produced from the mare by a black Arabian sire, were much more plainly
barred across the legs than is even the pure quagga. Lastly, and this
is another most remarkable case, a hybrid has been figured by Dr.
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