To the Field [before 27 April 1861]1
[Down]
I should esteem it a great favour if some of your numerous readers would take the trouble to give me any facts on the colour of the two parents of true dun horses.2 I mean by true duns, horses having a stripe or list along the the spine, and often transverse stripes on the legs, the general colouring being either a mouse-dun or a tint which may be described as a creamy bay or chesnut. I am aware from inquires made in Norway, where true dun ponies are extremely common, that one or both parents are there always duns; and so it is, as I am informed, with the dun ponies of Devonshire. But I have occasionally seen dun cart-horses and hacks, which did not seem to have the blood of any pony or cob in them. It is surprising how often I have vainly asked the parentage of such horses, and vainly made inquiries from breeders. I have myself seen one colt, bred from a black mare and bay horse, which might certainly be called a dun, and which had a narrow, but strongly defined, spinal stripe before it shed its first hair. I should be much obliged for any information on this subject; and likewise whether a dun horse or pony is always dun-coloured before it sheds its first hair.3 Does the spinal stripe often disappear when the first coat is shed?—
Charles Darwin (Down, Bromley, Kent.)
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Requests facts concerning the colour of the parents of true dun horses. His interest also in the colour and presence of spinal stripes of dun horses or ponies before they lose their first hair.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3128A
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- The Field
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- The Field, the Farm, the Garden, the Country Gentleman’s Newspaper 17 (1861): 358
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3128A,” accessed on 27 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3128A.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9