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Show 62 ASSES. ('JTAl'. Jl. THE Ass. FouR species of Asses, besides three of zebras, have boon doscrib d by naturalists; but there can now be little doubt that ouT domesticated animal is descended from one a~one, nai~ely, tho Asinus tamiopus of Abyssinia.39 Tho . ass IS sometimes advanced as an instance of an animal domesticated, as we know by the Old 'festamcnt, from an ancient ~eri.od, which has varied only in a very slight degree. But tlns IS by no means strictly true ; for in Syria alone there are four. breeds ; 40 firs:, a light and graceful animal, with an agreeab~e gait, used by ladies; secondly, an Arab breed reserved exclusi.vely for the. saddle; thirdly, a stouter animal used for ploughmg a~d vanous yurposes; and lastly, the large Damascus breed, w1th a peculiarly long body and ears. In this country, and .gener~lly m Central Europe, though the ass is by no means ~mform m ~ppoarance, it has not given rise to distinct breeds hke those of tho horse. Thi. may probably be accounted for by the animal being kept chiefly by poor persons, who do not rear large numbers, n~r carefully match and select the young. For, as we shall see m a future chapter, the ass can with ease be greatly improved in size and strength by careful selection, combined no doubt with good food; and we may infer that all its other characters would be equally amenable to selection. 'l'he small size of the ass in England and Northern Europe is apparently due faT more to want of care in breeding than to cold; for in vVestern India, where the ass is used as a beast of burden by some of the lower castes, it is not much larger than a Newfoundland dog, " being geneTally not more than from twenty to thirty inches high." 41 The ass varies greatly in colour; and its legs, especially the fore-legs, both in England and other countries-for instance, in China-arc occasiona1ly baned transversely more plainly than those of dun-coloured horses. With the horse the occasional appearance of leg-stripes was accounted for, through.the principle of reversion, by the supposition that the primitive horse was 39 Dr. Sclater, in 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' 1862, p. 164. 4° W.C.Martin, 'HistoryoftheHorse,' 1845, p. 207. 41 Col. Sykes' Cat. of Mammalia, 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' July 12th, 1831. Williamson, 'Oriental Field Sports,' vol. ii., quoted by Martin, p. 206. CIIAI'. II. TIIEIR COLOURS AND STRIPES. 63 thus striped; with the ass we may confidently advance this explanation, for the parent-form, the A. tamiopus, is known· to be .barred, th~ugh only in a slight degree, acros the legs. The stripes are believed to occur most frequently and to be plainest on t~1o lc?s of the domestic ass during early youth,42 as is apparently hkow~sc the case with the horse. The shoulder-stripe, which is :o emmcntly characteristic of the species, is nevertheless va6able m breadth, length, and manner of termination. I have measured a shonl~er-stripe four times as broad as another; and some more th~n twiCe as long as others. In one light-grey ass the shoulderstnye was on~y six inches in length, and as thin as a piece of stnng ; and m another animal of the same colour there was onl! a dusky shade representing a stripe. I have heard of three wh~te asses, not albinoes, with no trace of shoulder or spinal stnpes; 43 and I have seen nine other asses with no shoulder-stripe, a.nd some of them had no spinal stripe. Three of the nine were hght-greys, one a dark-grey, another grey passing into reddishroa~, and. the ?thers wore brown, two being tinted on parts of their bodies w~th a reddish or bay shade. Hence we may conclude that, If grey and reddish-brown asses had been steadily selected and bred from, the shoulder-stripe would have been .almost as generally and as completely lost as in the case of the horse. The shoulder-stripe on the ass is sometimes double and M . Blyth ha~ seen even three or four parallel stripes.44' I hav~ observed m t~n cases shoulder-stripes abruptly truncated at the lo,:er end,. wrth the anterior angle produced into a tapering pomt, preCisely as has been figured in tho dun Devonshire pony. I have seen three cases of the terminal portion abruptly and . angularly bent ; and two cases of a distinct though slight forlnng. In ~yria, Dr. Hooker and his party observed for me no less than five mstances of the shoulder-stripe beina plainly forked o~er the fore leg. In the common mule it is 0 likewise sometime~ forked. When I first noticed the forking and angular benchng of the shoulder-stripe, I had seen enough of the stripes 42 Blyth, in 'Charlesworth's Mng. of , The Horse,' p. 205. Nat. Hist.,' vol. iv., 1840, p. 83. I have 44 'Journal As. Soc. of Ben.,.al' vol. aisl stoh eb eceanse a. ssured by a breeder that this xxvm.... 1860 , P· 231. Martin o on' the 43 0 Horse, p. 205. ne case is given by Martin, |