Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/86

54 many cases first represented by spots or interrupted zigzag wavy line?. Between the stifle or third flank stripe and the point of the hock there are a number of dark bands (between some of which are shadow stripes), while below the hock there are first several distinct transverse bars, and then a number of less distinct oblique lines, right down to the hoof. Similar bars and lines occur on the fore-limb. These leg bars were at birth more distinct than in the Zebra sire. Continuous with the mane is a well-defined dorsal band (with a narrow yellow band at each side) which extends some distance into the tail. The tail in the hybrid had, at birth, long hairs right up to the root, but, notwithstanding this, there were three distinct bars visible at each side; similar tail bars I have once seen in a Horse.

Though the ears look long in some of the photographs, they are now relatively very little longer (though rounder at the apex) than in the majority of Horses. The nostrils, in their shape, position, &c, are Zebra-like, and the eyes and eyebrows may be said to be intermediate; but the eyelashes are long and curved, and quite unlike the short almost straight eyelashes of Zebras and Horses. The feet of Romulus suggest the Zebra more than the Horse. They seem to be made of excellent stuff, and to stand a good deal of wear. In his movements, the hybrid takes more after his sire than his dam. A few minutes after birth he was rushing about his box, impatient apparently to join the parental troop. What has struck me from the first has been his alertness and the expedition with which he escapes from suspicious or unfamiliar objects. When quite young, if caught napping in the paddock, the facility with which he, as it were, rolled on to his feet and darted off was wonderful. The principal enemy of the Zebra seems to be the Lion. To escape from the Lion, great and sustained speed is not so requisite as a decided and rapid bound when the Lion makes his spring, or when he is accidentally met with in the veld. This rapidity of getting out of the way has been strongly inherited by all the hybrids. Zebras, as far as my experience goes, are difficult to handle, not so much because they are vicious or intractable, as because they are afraid. At any moment they may be seized by panic,—when they imagine there is a Lion in the path,—and, regardless of consequences, rush, it may be, against a wall or a hedge, or into