30 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the same rule holds in the hinnan species, of which a single one 

 will suffice here: — " A young woman residing in Edinburgh, and 

 born of white parents, but whose mother previous to her marriage 

 bore a mulatto child by a negro man servant, exhibits distinct 

 traces of the negro. Dr. Simpson, whose patient at one time, the 

 young woman was, recollects being struck with the resemblance, 

 and noticed particularly that the hair had the qualities character- 

 istic of the negro." 



Dr. Carpenter, in the last edition of his work on physiolog}-, says 

 it is by no means an infrequent occurrence for a widow who has 

 married again to bear children resembling her first husband. 



Various explanations have been offered to account for the facts 

 observed, among which the theory of Mr. McGillivray, V. S., which 

 is endorsed by Dr. Harvey, and considered (as we shall presently 

 see) as very probable at least by Dr. Carpenter, seems the most 

 satisfactory. Dr. Harvey says : 



" Instances are sufficiently common among the lower animals 

 where the offspring exhibit more or less distinctly over and beyond 

 the characters of the male by which they were begotten, the pecu- 

 liarities also of a male by which their mother at some former period 

 had been impregnated. * * * Great difficulty has been felt by 

 physiological writers in regard to the proper explanation of this 

 kind of phenomena. They have been ascribed by some to a per- 

 manent impression made somehow by the semen of the first male 

 on the genitals and more particularly on the ova of the female :* 

 and by others to an abiding influence exerted by him on the imag- 

 ination and operating at the time of her connection subsequently 

 with other males and perhaps during her pregnancy ; but they 

 seem to be regarded by most physiologists as inexplicable. 



Very recently, in a paper published in the Aberdeen Journal, a 

 Veterinary Surgeon, Mr. James McGillivray of Huntley, has offered 

 an explanation which seems to me to be the true one. His theory 

 is that " when a pure animal of any breed has been 23^egnant to an 

 animal of a different breed, such pregnant animal is a cross ever 

 after, the purity of Jier blood being lost in consequence of her connec- 



* The late Dr. Cuminp:, V. S. , of Now Brunswick, once remarked to the writer, 

 that it might be iluc to the fact that the nerves of the uterus, whicli before tlie first 

 imprejsrnation were in a rudimentary state, were developed under a specific influence 

 from the semen of the first male, and that they miprht retain so much of a ])eculiar 

 style of <lcvelopmcnt as to impress upon future i)rogeny by other males the like- 

 ness of the first. 



