Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/98

66 cervical stripes, there were at least five faint "shadow" stripes. In Zebra-Ass hybrids there are usually many indistinct stripes on the neck and body, and numerous spots over the hind quarters. I consider Zebra-Ass hybrids more primitive in their markings than Zebra-Horse hybrids. In having numerous cervical stripes Norna approaches Zebra-Ass hybrids, and the only explanation of this that occurs to me is that in Norna we have, in the striping of the neck, a further reversion than in any of the other hybrid offspring of Matopo.

During the first three months the mane of Norna was quite upright, though thicker than in the other hybrids. During the last four months the mane has been increasing in length, and it is now no longer upright; the posterior half hangs over to the right side, the part between and in front of the ears forms a thick forelock, while the intermediate portion hangs to the left side.

Norna with her short head, peculiarly tattooed face, and the heavy mane hanging partly to one side and partly to the other, looks very quaint, and seems to differ quite as much from her sire as she does from her dam the black Shetland pony. The coat is now very heavy, the long hairs over the body measuring over three inches, while many of the hairs over the brow are nearly two inches in length. If Norna develops after the fashion of Romulus, she will—a year hence—be a compact small striped pony from 11 to 11.2 hands in height. As is the case with Romulus, there is nothing about Norna that suggests either an ordinary mule or a hinny. She has excellent well-formed feet, only a few short hairs at the fetlock, and not a rudiment of warts on the hind legs.

Heckla's dam is a 12-hands skewbald Iceland pony. There is so much white in this pony (Tundra) and the yellow is so pale that I thought her hybrid foal would be nearly as light as a pure-bred Zebra. As it happens, Heckla is the darkest of all the hybrids, and the stripes are nearly as obscure as in the "Clydesdale" hybrid Brenda. As she lay by her dam shortly after birth, she looked like an overgrown Hare with an unusually long head and relatively long ears. From the first her coat has consisted of long coarse hairs, and the warts on the front legs are prominent, as in her dam. Measuring 32½ in. at birth, she