Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/94

62 the end of the fifth month (i.e. about the middle of October), consists of a thick inner coat of bay and brown fine wavy hairs, averaging an inch and a half in length, and of an outer but much less abundant coat of stronger hairs, many of which are 2½ in. in length. Neither the long nor short hairs nor the hairs of the mane have yet (January) begun to fall out.

The dam ("Lady Douglas") of Brenda is a cross-bred Clydesdale mare, built on the lines of the "Douglas" breed, once common in the Hamilton district. Like Biddy, she is a bay with black points, but, unlike the Irish mare, she has a large "blaze" on the face, a heavy mane and tail, and a liberal amount of hair at the fetlock joints. Lady Douglas is 15 hands high, the circumference at the knee is 13½ in., and below the knee 9 in. The face is longer than in Biddy by nearly an inch, and the ears by three-quarters of an inch. I expected Brenda (the Clydesdale's first foal) to closely resemble Remus in colour and markings, but in breeding, more especially in cross-breeding, the unexpected often happens. We are too apt to forget that, even when the sire belongs to a different and very distinct species, the progeny may take after the cross-bred dam. It was evident soon after Brenda (Plate II., fig. 2) was foaled that she differed not a little both from Romulus and Remus. In the first place her ears looked extremely long; they were at birth 6½ in., only a quarter of an inch shorter than the ears of her dam, and quite as long as the ears of her sire. The ears now measure seven and a half inches; on the other hand the head is relatively short—shorter than the head of a 12-hands Iceland pony's hybrid. The height at the withers was 43 in., one inch more than in Remus, and four inches more than in the Iceland hybrid. At birth Brenda, apart from her ears, looked not unlike an ordinary bay foal, but soon faint stripes began to show themselves, and in a day or two the stripes, though indistinct, were seen to closely agree in their arrangement with those of the other hybrids. Now that the "Clydesdale" hybrid is nearly seven months old, she at a little distance might easily be mistaken for an ordinary foal. Compared with Remus the head is shorter and finer, while the joints are larger and the shanks thicker. At six months the circumference at the knee