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MORE LIGHT ON THE COLOR OF HORSES Continued observations relating to the inherit ¬ ance of coat color in horses have ma do some of the laws seem so certain and unvarying that ex ¬ perts no longer hesitate to question pedigrees which run counter to these conclusions Professor W S Anderson of the Kentucky State Agricultural Col ¬ lege has for example recently expressed the opinion that several thoroughbred running horses have IKHII erroneously registered in the English Stud Book his conclusion in each case being based solely on the color of sire dam and foal To some horsemen this will seem like putting theory above practice practicejn jn examination of the stud l ook shows that in 1104 eases when a chestnut mare was bred to a chestnut horse 109 of the resulting foals were registered us chestnut Professor Anderson believes the other nine cases are mistakes in registration because he says in years of observation and re ¬ search he has not found a single authentic in ¬ stance where chestnut sire and dam have pro ¬ duced anything but chestnut colts His records cover almost 13000 matings of Suffolk Punches trotters and saddlebred horses and they show one hundred per cent chestnut foals foalsHis His explanation of the matter is that out of its hereditary material the chestnut horse has lost all the chemical qualities that can produce bay brown black roan or gray and having lost the elements capable of producing these colors there is no chance for two chestnuts to do anything but breed true to their own color colorProfessor Professor Anderson is now making an inquiry concerning two gray runners registered in the American Stud Book as the produce of bay or brown parents Argon a bay mare by imp Candle ¬ mas was reported to have produced in 1905 a gray colt by imp Bridgewater also a bay and Salome a bay mare by Bend Or was reported to have foaled in 1901 u gray colt by the brown liorse Handsome HandsomeAssuming Assuming that the law governing the trans ¬ mission of gray is invariable and Professor Ander ¬ son says lie has found no other apparent varia ¬ tions in nearly twentylive thousand cases ex ¬ amined there are several ways in which mistakes might have l eeii made as to the foals in ques ¬ tion At least one of the foals was reported for registration when only a few months old and It is well known that colts sometimes appear to change color after they shed their first coat AH a gray horse and a black one are usually almost alike in color when foaled there is a possibility that one nr both of these colts turned out to l e black though at first lielleved to lie gray grayThe The explanation of the fact that a gray horse always has at least one gray parent is that the chemical elements necessary to prodnce gray coat color are found only in gray horses and when once lost there Is no way to revive the color except by breeding back to it The persistence with which it is sometimes transmitted from genera ¬ tion to generation seems to afford strong confirma ¬ tion of Mendels theory that such unit characters as cont color are often projected with inextinguish ¬ able potency through long lines of descent and that the forces Or factors which carry these characters forward in heredity often preserve their Identity and power when in conflict with opposing characters after many generations have passed passedAn An example is found in the gray mare Tagalie that won the Epsom Derby in England a few years asn She inherited her coat color from her dam Tagale and she from Le Sancy the great French race horse that was her sire Le Sancy was out of Gem of Gems a gray mare by Stratcouaii a gray whose dam Souvenir also gray was by the gray horse Chanticleer He got his color from his dam Whim a daughter of the gray horse Drone whose sire Master Roliert foaled in 1811 was gray and he was out of Spinster a gray graySpinsters Spinsters dam an unnamed gray was out of Bab a gray mare that produced ten consecutive gray foals by the buy horse Sir Peter Teazle Babs dam wns Speranra sister of the noted race horse Saltram by Eclipse out of Virago by Snap Spcranza was gray three of her four recorded foals were gray while her dam also gray pro ¬ duced seven gray foals Viragos dam an mummed sister to the famous Othello or Blackandall Black was another prepotent gray mare having prodoncod four out of five gray foals by sires that were either bay or chestnut She was by Crab a horse distinguished as a runner and as a sire early In the eighteenth centnrv Crab had a re ¬ markable atlinity for gray Of his twelve daughters recorded in the British Stud Book all but two uoro ijrays that produced gray foals by hay sires spring of several of these mares being almost uniformly gray grayCrabs Crabs prepotency in thus perpeuating his own color is perhaps explained by the fact that both his sire Alcocks Arabian and his dam Basto Mare were gray The color of the dam is not given In the tii l book but presentday knowledge of the laws of inheritance of coat color in horses makes it possible to determine bor colof two hundred years after she was liorn Bred to tho bay or chestnut horse Flying Childers in 1727 she produced the gray colt Blacklegs which proves that she was herself gray grayFrom From Tngalie to the sire and dam of Crab is eighteen generations covering a period of practic ¬ ally two hundred years And the gray color of the twentieth century Derby winner has come down through all these years handed on from one gen ¬ eration to the next without a break and without being reinforced more than once bv a fresh cross to the same color At each mating since 1721 except that which produced Bab in 17S7 the thin gray line has met an opposing color and overcome New York Herald
