Note 24 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Chapter XXX, verses 31-43. A knowledge of the pedigree of Laban's cattle would undoubtedly explain where the stripes came from. It is interesting to note how this idea persists: a correspondent has recently sent an account of seven striped lambs born after their mothers had seen a striped skunk. The actual explanation is doubtless that suggested by Heller in the Journal of Heredity, VI, 480 (October, 1915), that a stripe is part of the ancestral coat pattern of the sheep, and appears from time to time because of reversion.