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COLOR AND RACING ABILITY. During tho recent meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Portsmouth, an interesting point was Taised by C. C. Hurst in a paper read to the Agricultural Section. It occurred in dealing with the subject of tho application of genetics to horse breeding. Whilo admitting that n general coat color and racing power do not seem to bear any sort of relationship to one another, being apparently inherited quito independently, he said that on the other hand evidence is gradually accumulating which suggests, that in certain strains there is a partial coupling of coat color and racing power. "For instance," said Mr. Hurst, "the famous St. Simon was a homozygous bay that never throw a chestnut. On the other hand, five of his most distinguished sons. Persimmon. Diamond Jubilee, Florizel II.. St. Frus-quln nnd AVilliam III., were all heterozygous bays and browns that threw chestnuts. These chestnut grandchildren of St. Simon have so far proved themselves to be much inferior in racing power to their bay aud brown brothers and sisters. Thus, while these chestnuts had between them only won two important races, their bay and brown brothers and sisters had between them won fifteen important races, and were only about twice as numerous. "Another interesting point under investigation is apparent partial tripling of brown coat color, high racing power and female sex in St. Simons own offspring. St. Simons brown fillies proved themselves to be strikingly superior in racing power to tho bay fillies, the brown colts, and even to the bay colts, a few individuals of which were extraordinarily good. This is the more remarkable when we consider that in racing, colts have many advantages over fillies. It seems possible that the elucidation of such an apparently trivial tiling as coat color may help to throw light 011 the more complicated question of the breeding of a classic winner. "
