by me of the young foal which was narrowly striped over nearly all its
body, there was no doubt about the early and complete disappearance of the
stripes. Mr. W.W. Edwards examined for me twenty-two foals of race-horses,
and twelve had the spinal stripe more or less plain; this fact, and some
other accounts which I have received, lead me to believe that the spinal
stripe often disappears in the English race-horse when old. With natural
species, the young often exhibit characters which disappear at maturity.]

The stripes are variable in colour, but are always darker than the rest of
the body. They do not by any means always coexist on the different parts of
the body: the legs may be striped without any shoulder-stripe, or the
converse case, which is rarer, may occur; but I have never heard of either
shoulder or leg-stripes without the spinal stripe. The latter is by far the
commonest of all the stripes, as might have been expected, 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; and that the
stripes in all the other breeds result from ancient crosses with this one
primitive dun; but it is extremely improbable that different breeds living
in such distant quarters of the world should all have been crossed with any
one aboriginally distinct stock. Nor have we any reason to believe that the
effects of a cross at a very remote period would be propagated for so many
generations as is implied on this view.

With respect to the primitive colour of the horse having been dun, Colonel
Hamilton Smith (2/41. 'Nat. Library' volume 12 1841 pages 109, 156 to 163,
280, 281. Cream-colour, passing into Isabella (i.e. the colour of the dirty