Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/95

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ON ZEBRA-HORSE HYBRIDS.
63

was 10¼ in., and below the knee 6⅛ in.—almost exactly the same as in Romulus when seventeen months old. The mane, at first nearly upright, short and Zebra-like, is now made up of hairs from eight to ten inches in length (nearly as long as in an ordinary foal of the same age). Except near the withers and between the ears the mane arches freely to the right side, some of the hairs almost touching the neck. The hair between the ears already projects forwards to form a forelock. In Remus, as already mentioned, the mane is still upright, and shorter than in his sire. The tail in Brenda has also from the first been heavier than in any other of the hybrids, and fewer hairs have been shed from its base; further, almost from the first there have been a few hairs at the fetlock joints. The hairs around the small ergots are now over two inches in length.

The chestnuts on the fore legs in the Zebra are large and smooth, and on a level with the skin; in Romulus and Remus they are also large, and hardly if at all above the level of the skin, but they occasionally give off thin scales. In Brenda the front chestnuts, though relatively nearly as large as in a Zebra, project as far above the level of the skin as in a pure Clydesdale foal. The left hind leg carries a small prominent chestnut about a quarter of an inch in diameter, but there is no rudiment of a chestnut on the right hind leg. The hoofs are the hoofs of a Zebra, and considerably smaller than would be the hoofs of a Clydesdale foal of the same age. They are wide behind and rounded in front, but the bars are relatively short, i.e. they do not extend as far back as the frog. I may add, the nostrils are in their shape a little less Zebra-like than in the other hybrids; that the muzzle suggests the dam more than the sire, the lower lip being, as in the dam, somewhat long; and that the rounded ears are tipped with white, as is occasionally the case in dun ponies as well as in Zebras. As might have been expected, the trunk and hind quarters are more massive than in Remus, while the shoulders are less upright, and perhaps as a consequence of this the action at all times is less Zebra-like than in any of the other hybrids. As fig. 2 (PI. II.) indicates, there is a "swirl" nearly three inches in length extending down the centre of the face between the eyes. The same figure also indicates fairly well the extent of the marking at the end of the second month. The