EVOLUTION 461 



is .177, and for dam and offspring is .524. We may here 

 argue for prepotency of the female in coat-colour. The 

 average of both is fairly close to the .3 of theory. If we 

 look at the grandsire and offspring vye find an average 

 intensity of .106, while the grand-dam and offspring yield 

 the value .156. We might hesitate, however, to assert the 

 prepotency of the female did not the case differ essentially 

 from that of the Indian women, for what the male has 

 lost in influence the female appears to have gained. It 

 thus hardly looks as if the putative sires were not the 

 real sires. But if this prepotency of the dam be real, 

 it may not be inherent in the dog, but be a result of the 

 peculiar conditions under which the pedigree sire lives 

 and performs his functions. Admit the prepotency, and 

 the relative importance hitherto attached to the sire 

 requires to be reconsidered, at least for the bloodhound.^ 



Another point which our quantitative method enables 

 us effectively to study is telegony (p. 454). If the female 

 can be influenced at later reproductions by the male who 

 has been associated with her in earlier ones, then if this 

 influence is anything but occasional and abnormal, we 

 ought to find a steady tendency of the gametes of the 

 female to approach the male type, if the union between 

 them is permanent. Telegony, if its existence could be 

 demonstrated, which is very far from the case, is either 

 due to a steady influence of this kind, or to the abnormal 

 preservation in some manner of the gametes of an earlier 

 union. In the latter case the function of the second male 

 is not obvious, and there ought to be no resemblance at 

 all to him in the offspring. In the former case we ought 

 to find that with a permanent union an increasing influence 

 of the paternal, a decreasing influence of the maternal type 

 as we pass from early to late offspring. To settle the 

 existence then of this steady telegonic influence we have 



^ There is no such prepotency in the dam over tlie sire in the case of 

 coat-colour in horses. The classification of grandsire and grand-dam in 

 Table I. of • Mr. Francis Galton's paper on Basset Hounds [Roy. Soc. 

 Proc. vol. Ixi. p. 409) has been interchanged. For cases of prepotency of 

 the male in plants, see Darwin, Cross and Self-Fertilisation, pp. 154, 394, 

 and 39S. 



