To Gardeners’ Chronicle [before 13 June 1857]1
Will any reader of the Gardeners’ Chronicle be so kind as to take the trouble to inform me how Dun or Mouse-coloured Ponys with a dark stripe down their backs are bred? This breed is common in Norway on the banks of the Indus & in the Malayan archipelago, & is in some respects very interesting in relation to the origin of the domestic Horse.2 Is this peculiar colour thrown from Ponys of any other colour, or must one or both parents be Dun?
Occasionally ponys of this colour have a cross stripe on the shoulder, like that on the Ass, & likewise bars on the legs. If anyone who has bred ponys of this colour, would inform me whether their stripes are more distinct in the colt than in aged ponys, I shd. be greatly obliged. The transverse bars sometimes seen on the legs of the Ass are said to be plainest during growth.
Ch. Darwin Down, Bromley Kent
Footnotes
Bibliography
Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
Summary
Requests information from readers on breeding of dun or mouse-coloured ponies with a dark stripe down their backs. Must one or both parents be dun?
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2105
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Gardeners’ Chronicle
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Gloucestershire Archives (T. C. Morton deposit D1021/8/4)
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2105,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2105.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6