The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-10-18
EXPERIMENTS IN BREEDING.
Some Novel Results in England With
the Zebra Family.

ZIG ZeDTa Family.
A peculiar interest is attached to the
species of zebra Of which a couple of
specimens have just been presented by
the emperor of Abyssinia to the queen.
Not long ago Prof. Cossar Ewart of
Edinburgh successfully repeated on his
estate of Penicuik, in the Pentlands. the
famous experiment of Lord Morton,
who in the early part of this century
succeeded in producing a singular hy
bird between quagga and a mare The
whole quagga species having since that
date become extinct, Professor Ewart
made use of a Burchel's zebra of
Transvaal origin as the sire of his
hybrid, the dam being q Highland pony
mare, and he bestowed on their off
spring the title of Romulus, and on
zebra-mare hybrids as class the name
of zebrules. Young Romulus was
most charming and beautiful little an
imal and, as may be anticipated, his
coat was profusely marked with stripes,
but the extraordinary thing about him
was that on a close examination of his
markings the numerous lines of stripes
on his face. his body and his legs
proved not to follow. as one would nat
urally have expected, the same pat
tern as the stripes on his sire, the
Burchells zebra. On the contrary, in
number, in breadth and in arrangement
they differed entirely from his sres,
while they showed an astonishingly
close correspondence with those of an
other species of zebra altogether-name-
ly. equus grevyl.
Now equus grevyi is known to occur
only in Abyssinia and Somaliland. This
| is the species to which the pair recent
| ly presented to the queen belong, and
| no specimen of it has ever been found
| within 1000 miles of the district from
which the zebra employed by Professor
| I'Ntrs1 f-f III t1of, n Il rSlr,
| the hybrid or zebrue Romulus, come to
be striped like an Abyssinian zebra !?
Upon this point some light was subse
quently thrown by a very singular
fact. A year later Professor Ewart
bred second colt from the dam of
| Romulus the sire of which was not
| zebra but horse. Benazrek, a gray
Arabian from Wilfrid Blunt's stud.
| This second colt was thus not a zebrule,
| but a pure horse colt. Nevertheless,
strange to say, shortly after his birth
| he exhibited upon his Group a regular
| gridiron pattern of family marked
stripings. This was most unusual, for
not one ordinary horse colt out of 100,-
900 ever shows any signs of stripes
| upon the Group.
The question arises. where did this
son of Benazrek get these unknown
markings? Did they come indirectly
from his stepfather, the Burchell's ze-
bra? The answer that not few prac-
teal breeders would make to this would
| be in the affirmative. The influence of
| the first sire upon the subsequent pro-
geny of the dam by another sire known
to science as "telegony') is an article
| of faith with many. Against this sim
| pie explanation (Which, however, is not
| SO simple as it sounds) it has to be OBJ
served that the gridiron pattern visible
| upon Benazrek's sin was not like that
| ,NFj III stan fot NOV, Ia p,,,- ntlc ynl,,
| but rather resembled. as the case of
| his half-brother Romulus had done, the
| stripes of the Abyssinian equus breVyi,
| to whom he can have borne no ConceiV-
able relationship whatever. Perhaps on
| the whole the safest conclusion is that
| the Abyssinian zebra may be taken to
| be the nearest existing representative
of the oldest form of the equidae, and
| that the very abrupt cross between a
| zebra and a mare developed in the lat
| ter tendency not to reproduce a mere
| likeness of the particular zebra with
which she was mated, but rather to
| revert in her offspring to the type of
| equus.
No scientific man will doubt that all
| the varieties of asses and horses now
known to us are descended from older
forms, some of which date back to the
| tertiary period, and it is highly possible
that the oldest of them all was an ash
nine creature striped not unlike an
Abyssinian zebra. In that case both
| Romulus and his half brother would
seem to be instances of what breeders
call throwing back" and they must
| have thrown back to an immensely re-
mote ancestor. AS the pair of Abyssin-
| ian zehras sent over by Emperor Men
| elek have now been safely deposited
at the gardens of the Geological society
| n h.. int
esting if an experiment similar to that
| so skillfully carried out by Professor
Ewart with such interesting results in
the case Of Burchelrs zebra could be
| tried anew with that species of zebra
to which his observations point as near
est to the aboriginal type of the whole
equine race.-Manchester Guardian.