920 OF GENERATION ACTION OF THE FEMALE. 



769. Attention has recently been directed to a very curious class of phe- 

 nomena, which show that where the mother has previously borne offspring, 

 the influence of its father may be impressed on her progeny afterwards be- 

 gotten by a different parent: as in the well-known case of the transmission 

 of Quagga-ruarks to a succession of colts, both of whose parents were of the 

 species Horse, the mare having been once impregnated by a Quagga male; 1 

 and in the not unfrequent occurrence of a similar phenomenon in the Human 

 species, as when a widow who marries a second time, bears children strongly 

 resembling her first husband. Some of these cases appear referable to the 

 strong mental impression left by the first male parent upon the female ; but 

 there are others which seem to render it more likely that the blood of the 

 female has imbibed from that of the foetus, through the placental circulation, 

 some of the attributes which the latter has derived from its male parent ; 

 and that the female may communicate these, with those proper to herself, to 

 the subsequent offspring of a different male parentage. 2 This idea is borne 

 out by a great number of important facts; and it serves to explain the cir- 

 cumstance well known to practitioners, that secondary syphilis will often 

 appear in a female during gestation or after parturition, who has never had 

 primary symptoms, whilst the father of the child shows no recent syphilitic 

 disorder. For if he have communicated a syphilitic taint to the foetus, the 

 mother may become inoculated with it through her offspring, in the manner 

 just described. As this is a point of great practical importance, it may be 

 hoped that those who have the opportunity of bringing observation to bear 

 upon it, will not omit to do so. 



770. There seems good reason to believe, moreover, that the attributes of 

 the Germ are in a great degree dependent, not merely upon the habitual 

 conditions of the Parents which have furnished its original components, but 

 even upon the condition in which those parents may be at the time of sexual 

 congress. Of this we have a remarkable proof in the phenomenon well 

 known to breeders of animals, that a strong mental impression made upon 

 the female by a particular male, will give the offspring a resemblance to 

 him, even though she has had no sexual intercourse with him; 3 a circum- 

 stance for which there is no difficulty in accounting, on the hypothesis al- 

 ready put forth regarding the dynamical relation of mental states to the 

 Organic processes (chap. xvii). And there is no improbability, therefore, in 

 the idea that the offspring of parents ordinarily healthy and temperate, but 

 begotten in a fit of intoxication on both sides, would be likely to suffer per- 

 manently from the abrogation of the reason, which they have temporarily 

 brought upon themselves. 4 On the whole, then, we seem entitled to con- 

 clude, that the attributes of the embryo will be influenced in a most im- 

 portant degree by the entire condition (as relates both to the organic and 

 the psychical life) of both parents at the time of the sexual congress ; and it 

 is probably on account of the perpetual changes taking place in the bodily 

 and mental state of each individual (his condition at any one time being the 

 general resultant of all those changes), that we almost constantly witness 

 marked differences between children born at successive intervals, however 

 strong may be the " family likeness" among them ; whilst the resemblance 

 between twins is almost invariably much closer. 5 



1 Philosophical Transactions, 1821. 



a Src an interesting discussion of this question, by Dr. Alex. Harvey, in theEdinb. 

 Monthly Jon rn., Oct. 1849, and Oct. and Nov. 1850; and in his pamphlet, On a 

 Remarkable Kll'cet of Cross-breeding, Edinb., 1851. 



3 See Harvey, loc. cit. 



4 See a case of this kind related by Mr. G. Combe, in the Phrenological Journal, 

 vol. viii, p. 471. 



5 Where twins are very unlike one another, it will usually be found that the dis- 



