conspicuous in the mule than in the ass. In the United States, Mr. Gosse
(13/33. 'Letters from Alabama' 1859 page 280.), speaking of these animals,
says, "that in a great number, perhaps in nine out of every ten, the legs are
banded with transverse dark stripes."

Many years ago I saw in the Zoological Gardens a curious triple hybrid, from a
bay mare, by a hybrid from a male ass and female zebra. This animal when old
had hardly any stripes; but I was assured by the superintendent, that when
young it had shoulder-stripes, and faint stripes on its flanks and legs. I
mention this case more especially as an instance of the stripes being much
plainer during youth than in old age.

As the zebra has such a conspicuously striped body and legs, it might have
been expected that the hybrids from this animal and the common ass would have
had their legs in some degree striped; but it appears from the figures given
in Dr. Gray's 'Knowsley Gleanings' and still more plainly from that given by
Geoffroy and F. Cuvier (13/34. 'Hist. Nat. des Mammiferes' 1820 tome 1), that
the legs are much more conspicuously striped than the rest of the body; and
this fact is intelligible only on the belief that the ass aids in giving,
through the power of reversion, this character to its hybrid offspring.

The quagga is banded over the whole front part of its body like a zebra, but
has no stripes on its legs, or mere traces of them. But in the famous hybrid
bred by Lord Morton (13/35. 'Philosoph. Transact.' 1821 page 20.) from a
chestnut, nearly purely-bred, Arabian mare, by a male quagga, the stripes were
"more strongly defined and darker than those on the legs of "the quagga." The
mare was subsequently put to a black Arabian horse, and bore two colts, both
of which, as formerly stated, were plainly striped on the legs, and one of
them likewise had stripes on the neck and body.