Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/93

Rh for much, one can understand why they almost reach their full size at birth. Foals are given to straying in all directions, and unless they hear and at once recognize the call of their respective dams, and the direction from which the sound comes, their chances of surviving in a wild state would be greatly reduced. At birth, the ears of Romulus were longer than in his dam, and only slightly shorter than in his sire. In the case of Remus they were the same length as in his dam, viz. six inches along the inner aspect.

The eyes in Biddy's foal are hazel-coloured and gazelle-like in their mildness, and the eyelashes are particularly long and curved. The mane was at first made up of soft hairs, which bent over to the right side. The mane, however, soon assumed an upright position, and now, when nearly eight months old, it consists of nearly erect but not very stiff hairs. It looks as if the mane will always be as upright and as short as in his sire. The tail contains fewer hairs than any of the other hybrids, and has three bars across the root. On the other hand, unlike ordinary Mules, there are chestnuts on the hind legs as well as on the fore. The front chestnuts are large, level with the skin, and Zebra-like; the hind chestnuts are raised above the level of the skin, and, though narrow and only half an inch in length, are Horse-like. That the Zebras and Asses have no chestnuts on the hind legs may perhaps be due to the absence of chestnuts in their remote ancestors; their absence points, I think, to Asses and Zebras having sprung from a different ancestor (perhaps Hipparion) than the Horses, which may have descended straight from Protohippus. If Remus survives, he may reach a height of nearly 14 hands, and be the most handsome and fleetest of all the present crop of hybrids.

As in the case of Zebra foals, the hair over the back and hind quarters of Remus soon increased in length, and formed a thick woolly covering. The hair of the first coat usually falls off soonest from the face and neck, then from the legs, especially at the knees and above and below the hocks. Some of the hair was shed from the face by the end of the first month, but there was still some left on the muzzle and brow at the end of the third month, and the legs retained some of the foal's coat at the end of the fourth month. The second coat, which was completed by