TELEGONY 



A Superstition that Dies Hard — Experimental Evidence from Breeding and 

 Deductions from Embryology^Supposed PJienomenon as Negli- 

 gible in Eugenics as in Stock-Breeding. ' 



Dr. Etienne Rabaud, 

 Maitre de Conferences a la Faculte des Sciences de Paris, France. 



AMONG the different divisions 

 / \ which naturaHsts and physicians 

 / V have amused themselves by cre- 

 ating in heredity, surely none 

 is more remarkable then Telegony. It 

 alone, among all these divisions, has no 

 relation to the line of descent, direct or 

 indirect, between progenitors and off- 

 spring. Its principle is that females are 

 impregnated by the first males to which 

 they are bred, so that all their subse- 

 quent offspring, regardless of their 

 actual father, will show influence of the 

 first male. The latter is thus inter- 

 posed between direct ascendants and 

 descendants. Telegony, then, is sup- 

 posedly a phenomenon of particular 

 importance, since it is assumed to be able 

 to modify the inherited constitution of 

 lines of descent among animals; and it 

 is of high interest to examine it just at 

 this time, when eugenics is assuming 

 such a prominent place in the attention 

 of medical men. 



As a fact, very serious suspicions rest 

 on the reality of this phenomenon. 

 Even the data cited to support it are 

 not based on exact observations; most, 

 if not all, are the reports of sportsmen 

 or stock-breeders. Even at the present 

 day, these latter jealously keep their 

 female breeding animals carefully 

 guarded, to avoid the chance of their 

 being bred by a male of inferior pedi- 

 gree.^ But their affirmations seem to be 

 more the result of simple belief than of 

 scientific observation. 



The first report, which has become 



classic and was sufficient to convert 

 Darwin, goes back to 1821: a mare of 

 almost pure Arabian blood, belonging to 

 Lord Morton, was bred to a quagga and 

 foaled a hybrid. Afterward bred on 

 two different occasions to a black Arabi- 

 an stallion, she foaled two colts of brown 

 color, whose legs were striped more 

 plainly than those of the hybrid or even 

 than those of the quagga himself; well- 

 marked stripes also existed on the neck 

 and some other parts of the body: the 

 hair of the mane was short, stiff and 

 erect, exactly as is the case with the 

 quagga. 



Since 1821, numerous similar cases 

 have been reported. Darwin, among 

 others, cites the following, which was 

 communicated to him by Doctor Bower- 

 bank: "A Turkish dog, black and hair- 

 less, having been accidentally bred by a 

 spaniel of mixed blood with long, brown 

 hair, produced a litter of five pups, 

 three of which were hairless, while the 

 other two were covered by short brown 

 hair. When bred later by a Turkish 

 dog, equally black and hairless, she 

 produced a litter of pups, half of which 

 resembled their mother — that is, pure 

 Turk — while the other half were exactly 

 like the pups with short hair, sired by 

 the spaniel." 



STORIES OF DOG BREEDERS. 



In a general way, dog fanciers believe 

 in telegony, and in this manner interpret 

 most diverse occurrences. Thus Kiener 

 writes, in his "Observations on Hered- 



1 Translated from Biologica, IV, 41,129, Paris, 15 mai, 1914. 



- It would be a mistake to think that this statement applies without qualification to the United 

 States. Most cattle, horse and swine breeders now disregard telegony; but dog and sheep breeders, 

 as a rule, still adhere to the idea, and several sheep breeders' associations even refuse to register 

 lambs whose mothers were ever "impregnated" by mating with a common ram. — The Editor. 



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