I examined some mares of the farm-horse type with their foals in a field at Radley in 1915 with the following results. All the mothers showed the common reversed area or pattern on the under surfaces of their necks. Of the five foals all but one showed clear evidence, even in their thick young coats, of a similar pattern, the fifth had none. I also noted two similar examples in a field at Harrogate in the same year and both the mothers and the foals showed the usual pattern; and again at Radley in 1918 four more foals, one of them 24 hours old, who all showed this reversed area. Here then are ten examples of undoubted transmission of the effects of pressure by harness in subjects so young as to be still suckled by their dams, and, of course, never themselves touched by such pressure. I submit that even one such unmistakable example would be enough to prove the case, and that the necessary conditions of a rigorous undesigned experiment by man have been fulfilled.
At the end of this chapter which concludes the facts of the case I think it may serve to make the position a little clearer if I state objections which have been or might be raised.
It will not escape the mind of any person who has followed critically this process of inquiry, that in Chapter VII, where the immense variety of the patterns found on the side of the horse’s neck are described, there is an apparent resemblance between them and those on the ventral or under surface of the neck. The former were shown to be due to natural forces, those of sustained and repeated underlying muscular traction of muscles and jolting of the neck in locomotion; whereas in this chapter a considerable number of patterns have been brought forward and pictured on the under surface, and these are attributed to artificial pressure from harness. The reasonable objection is raised, “Why should the former be considered natural and the latter artificial in their origin?”
The answer to this is supplied by a consideration of the muscles shown in the two contrasted regions. In Figs. 3, 4 and 5, the muscles of the side of the neck are shown to be remarkably _strong and numerous_ (in three layers), and _diverging in their directions_. In the muscles of the under surface of the neck of the horse, see Fig. 12, the muscles of the two sides shown are nearly parallel and no conflict of opposing or diverging muscles can well take place in this “debateable land.” If there were much divergent or opposing action going on it would, of course, produce the effects on the hair towards the _upper_ part of the neck, where the muscles tend to diverge more and more as they pass to the head, and I have stated above that not a single instance in many thousands of horses has been found above the level where a loose collar ceases to rub when jolted upwards. This is very conclusive on the matter of diverging or opposing muscular action.