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Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, the — Volume 1 by Charles Darwin
page 85 of 624 (13%)
[This tendency in the horse to become striped is in several respects an
interesting fact. Horses of all colours, of the most diverse breeds, in
various parts of the world, often have a dark stripe extending along the
spine, from the mane to the tail; but this is so common that I need enter
into no particulars. (2/33. Some details are given in 'The Farrier' 1828
pages 452, 455. One of the smallest ponies I ever saw, of the colour of a
mouse, had a conspicuous spinal stripe. A small Indian chestnut pony had
the same stripe, as had a remarkably heavy chestnut cart-horse. Race-horses
often have the spinal stripe.) Occasionally horses are transversely barred
on the legs, chiefly on the under side; and more rarely they have a
distinct stripe on the shoulder, like that on the shoulder of the ass, or a
broad dark patch representing a stripe. Before entering on any details I
must premise that the term dun-coloured is vague, and includes three groups
of colours, viz., that between cream-colour and reddish-brown, which
graduates into light-bay or light-chestnut--this, I believe is often called
fallow-dun; secondly, leaden or slate-colour or mouse-dun, which graduates
into an ash-colour; and, lastly, dark-dun, between brown and black. In
England I have examined a rather large, lightly-built, fallow-dun
Devonshire pony (Figure 1), with a conspicuous stripe along the back, with
light transverse stripes on the under sides of its front legs, 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
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