128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



He describes them as having "the character of the Arabian breed as 

 decidedly as can be expected where fifteen sixteenths of the blood are 

 Arabian, and they are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their 

 color and in the hair of their manes they have a striking resemblance 

 to the quagga." The description of the stripes visible on their coats 

 is careful and circumstantial, but the evidence of the nature of the mane 

 is less convincing: "Both their manes are black; that of the filly is 

 short, stiff, and stands upright, and Sir Gore Ouseley's stud groom 

 alleged that it never was otherwise. That of the colt is long, but so 

 stiff as to arch upward and to hang clear of the sides of the neck, in 

 which circumstance it resembles that of the hybrid." 



This is the classical, we might almost say the test, case of telegony: 

 the offspring resembled not so much the sire as an earlier mate of the 

 dam. The facts related tended to confirm the popular view, and that 

 view is widely spread. Arab breeders act on the belief, and it is so 

 strongly implanted in the miuds of certain English breeders that they 

 make a point of mating their mares first with stallions having a good 

 pedigree, so that their subsequent progeny may benefit by its influence, 

 even though poorly bred sires are subsequently resorted to. 



The evidence of Lord Morton's mare convinced Darwin of the 

 existence of telegony; after a careful review of the case he says "there 

 can be no doubt that the quagga affected the character of the offspring 

 subsequently got by the black Arabian horse." Darwin, however, lat- 

 terly came to the conclusion that telegony only occurred rarely, and 

 some years before his death expressed the opinion that it was "a very 

 occasional phenomenon." Agassiz believed in telegony. He was 

 strongly of the opinion "that the act of fecundation is not an act which 

 is limited in its effects, but that it is an act which affects the whole 

 system, the sexual system especially; and in the sexual system the ovary 

 to be impregnated hereafter is so modified by the first act that later im- 

 pregnations do not efface that first impression." 



Romanes also believed that telegony occasionally occurred. He 

 paid a good deal of attention to the matter, commenced experiments in 

 the hope of settling the question, and corresponded at length on this 

 subject with professional and amateur breeders and fanciers. The result 

 of his investigations led him to the conclusion "that the phenomenon 

 is of much less frequent occurrence than is generally supposed. Indeed, 

 it is so rare that I doubt whether it takes place in more than one or two 

 per cent of cases." A recent controversy in the Contemporary Review 

 shows us that Mr. Herbert Spencer is a firm upholder of telegony, and 

 that he has a theory of his own as to the mode in which it is brought 

 about. He suggests that some 'germ-plasm' passes from the embryo 

 into the mother and becomes a permanent part of her body, and that 

 this is diffused throughout her whole structure until it affects, among 



