JACOB'S EXPERIMENT. 117 



I am a tliorougli believer in the power of the first parent to 

 mark all the succeeding progeny. I believe that the sire of 

 the mare's first foal has an influence upon every one of her 

 progeny, fading out, perhaps, as it goes on. It is not neces- 

 sary to refer to my own experience, or to anybody's experi- 

 ences, except in one celebrated case. At the beginning of 

 this century, the Duke of Richmond, I think it was, or some 

 celebrated English statesman, took a very fine thorough-bred 

 mare to the Zoological Gardens in London, and had her 

 crossed with a wild striped ass, a quagga, from the Cape of 

 Good Hope ; and she had a foal in due course of time, bearing 

 the stripes of the quagga. She was afterwards put to a 

 thorough-bred horse, and she threw a foal from the thorough- 

 bred horse strongly marked with the stripes of the quagga. 

 They continued to breed her ; and she had seven or eight 

 foals before she got through, every one of which bore the 

 marks of that first impress, fainter and fainter towards the 

 last. I have refused, in several instances, to have a mare 

 covered by a horse that once belonged to me, whose form I 

 wished to see in the colts, because the mare had been previ- 

 ously covered by notorious scrubs ; and I had no idea that 

 the subsequent cover could prevail over that influence. I 

 believe that about all breeders know that to be a fact. 



In regard to the point made by the last speaker, I believe, 

 too, that the appearance of stock is more or less influenced 

 by their surroundings. We read in the Bible, that when 

 Jacob served for a part of the droppings of the sheep, and 

 the young of the ewes that were to be that were striped and 

 spotted, he contrived to produce an extraordinary number of 

 spotted and striped ones, by peeling wands, and sticking them 

 up before the fulsome ewes. I have had men come to me 

 anxious to breed from gray mares; but, fearful of getting 

 gray stock (which is not fashionable nor so salable as other 

 colors), they would stipulate to have a bay horse or a black 

 horse led out to stand before the mare when she was covered ; 

 and I have no doubt that has been very influential in pre- 

 venting the breeding of gray horses. In France during the 

 last century, when they were anxious to have gray horses for 

 posting-purposes, because it was considered more lively in 

 dark nights to drive a team of gray horses, they followed the 

 same practice in breeding gray horses ; and everybody who 



