We thus see that in all parts of the world breeds of the horse as
different as possible, when of a dun-colour (including under this
term a wide range of tint from cream to dusty black), and rarely
when almost white tinged with yellow, grey, bay, and chestnut, have
the several above-specified stripes. Horses which are of a yellow
colour with white mane and tail, and which are sometimes called
duns, I have never seen with stripes.[37]
From reasons which will be apparent in the chapter on Reversion, I
have endeavoured, but with poor success, to discover whether duns,
which are so much oftener striped than other coloured horses, are
ever produced from the crossing of two horses, neither of which are
duns. Most persons to whom I have applied believe that one parent
must be dun; and it is generally asserted that, when this is the
case, the dun-colour and the stripes are strongly inherited.[38]
One case, however, has fallen under my own observation of a foal
from a black mare by a bay horse, which when fully grown was a dark
fallow-dun and had a narrow but plain spinal stripe. Hofacker[39]
gives two instances of mouse-duns (Mausrapp) being produced from
two parents of different colours and neither duns.
The stripes of all kinds are generally plainer in the foal than in
the adult horse, being commonly lost at the first shedding of the
hair.[40] Colonel Poole believes that “the stripes in the Kattywar
breed are plainest when the colt is first foaled; they then become
less and less distinct till after the first coat is shed, when they
come out as strongly as before; but certainly often fade away as
the age of the horse increases.” Two other accounts confirm this
fading of the stripes in old horses in India. One writer, on the
other hand, states that colts are often born without stripes, but
that they appear as the colt grows older. Three authorities affirm
that in Norway the stripes are less plain in the foal than in the
adult. In the case described 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.
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