THE PENYCUIE EXPERIMENTS. 129 



other organs, the reproductive glands. This view, which in some 

 respects recalls the pangenesis of Darwin, is intermediate between the 

 saturation and the infection hypothesis. Professor Ewart refers to it 

 as indirect infection. 



Weismann, to whom we owe the term telegony, came to consider 

 the facts for and against its existence in connection with his well- 

 known inquiry into the inheritance of acquired characters. If telegony 

 be true, there is no need to look further for a clear case of the in- 

 heritance of a character which has been acquired during the lifetime 

 of the parent. The quagga-ness — if one may be permitted to use such 

 an expression — of Lord Morton's mare was acquired when she was put 

 to the quagga or shortly afterward, and was transmitted to her foals. 

 A clearer case of a character acquired during lifetime and transmitted to 

 offspring could not be imagined. Weismann does not absolutely deny 

 the possibility of the existence of telegony, but he would like more 

 evidence. In the Contemporary Review he writes, "I must say that to 

 this day, and in spite of the additional cases brought forward by Spencer 

 and Romanes, I do not consider that telegony has been proved." And 

 further: "I should accept a case like that of Lord Morton's mare as 

 satisfactory evidence if it were quite certainly beyond doubt. But that 

 is by no means the case, as Settegast has abundantly proved." He 

 would, in fact, refer the case to reversion, and quotes Settegast to the 

 effect that every horse breeder is well aware that the cases are not rare 

 when colts are born with stripes which recall the markings of a quagga 

 or zebra. We shall return to this point later. 



A considerable number of German breeders support the contention 

 of Weismann that telegony is as yet unproved, and it may be pointed 

 out that in Germany, on the whole, breeders have had a more scientific 

 education than in England, and that in that country science is regarded 

 with less aversion or contempt than is usually the case among so-called 

 practical men in England. We may mention one more case of an ex- 

 perienced breeder who was equally skeptical — the late Sir Everett 

 Millais, who was, as is well known, an authority of great weight in the 

 matter of dog-breeding. He writes as follows, in a lecture entitled Two 

 Problems of Reproduction: "I may further adduce the fact that in a 

 breeding experience of nearly thirty years' standing, during which I 

 have made all sorts of experiments with pure-blood dams and wild 

 sires, and returned them afterward to pure sires of their own breeds, 

 T have never seen a case of telegony, nor has my breeding stock suffered. 

 I may further adduce the fact that I have made over fifty experiments 

 for Professor Romanes to induce a case of telegony in a variety of 

 animals — dogs, ducks, hens, pigeons, etc. — but I have hopelessly failed, 

 as has every single experimenter who has tried to produce the 

 phenomenon." 



