390 



The Jolrxal of Heredity 



ity" (1900): "I got from an artesienne 

 bitch, bred to a splendid male of her 

 race, a pup with 'wall' eye. She had 

 ]jre\-iously been bred to a huj^e mastiff 

 which had that pecviliarity." Kunstler, 

 on his part, reports (1901) that a 

 French braque was first bred to an Irish 

 setter and then to a blue braque of 

 Au\'crgne, and then, by a third male — a 

 Gordon setter — had pups resembling 

 the Irish setter, and by a fourth male 

 (an Irish setter) had a litter of puj^s, one 

 of whom looked like the Gordon setter. 

 Resemblances, attributed to the same 

 phenomenon, have been reported among 

 shee]3 and goats, cattle, horses and 

 swine. White ewes covered by black 

 rams are said afterward to have borne 

 pigmented lambs, even when bred to 

 white rams. A cow of the Angus 

 breed — characterized by absence of 

 horns — first bred to a shorthorn bull, 

 is alleged afterward, when bred to a 

 polled Angus bull, to have produced a 

 calf with horns, which looked like a 

 grade Shorthorn. And as for horses, 

 almost every breeder believes that colts 

 foaled by a mare which has been pre- 

 vioush- bred to a jack, have a more or 

 less mulish ajji^earance. Cousin, in his 

 excellent study (1904), relates that in 

 Poitou popular belief considers mares 

 as "interiorly mulish" and attributes 

 that condition to the fact that for 

 many years the mares of that region 

 have been constantly used for the jjro- 

 duction of mules. The same writer 

 quotes the observation of Bernardin 

 (1901), relative to a mare whose first 

 two offsjjring were two mules. After- 

 ward bred to a heavy Arab stallion, she 

 foaled successively : 



(a) A colt of irrejjroachable form, 

 very easy-gaited, whose feet alone, 

 recalling those of its mother, were a 

 trifle unsatisfactory; 



(b) A colt which "showed, with cer- 

 tain diminutions, all the characters of a 

 mule: the head, the mane, the neck, the 

 withers, the back, the rump, the feet, 

 the gait and, above all, the proverbial 

 disposition." 



These few exam])les are enough to 



state the problem, while showing the 

 kind of evidence that has led to its 

 acceptance. I have taken the most 

 classical examples, and the most con- 

 vincing ones, too. Should they be 

 accepted without discussion, as the 

 expression of facts rigorously controlled 

 and rigorously interpreted? 



Not one of them, as a fact, is beyond 

 criticism, and it appears that a careful 

 examination leads us to give to each 

 case a different explanation, which is 

 not necessarily the same in ever}- in- 

 stance. 



VALUE OF THfi EVIDENCE. 



At the start, it must be insisted that 

 facts alleged to show telegony are never 

 the result of carefully controlled ex- 

 periments, nor even of obser\"ations 

 which take all the circiimstances into 

 consideration. When a breeder talks 

 of "pure bred," he refers to similar in- 

 dividuals which, bred together, usually 

 and exclusively give offspring that re- 

 semble their parents; he refers, then, to 

 a fixed race, but fixed only in these con- 

 ditions, and he pays no attention what- 

 ever to things that happen outside these 

 conditions. As a matter of fact, he can 

 not really know whether the animals 

 under consideration actually belong to 

 one of these "pure breeds," carefully 

 selected. The white mice furnish the 

 best proof of this statement. No "race" 

 is better fixed. Bred with each other, 

 white mice continue indefinitely to ])ro- 

 ducc descendants of the same color. 

 And yet, this uniformity, like this 

 fixity, conceals notable differences which 

 make themselves evident when one of 

 these white mice is bred to a wild gray' 

 mouse. The posterity of a number of 

 white females mated to the same gray 

 male will include diverse individuals, 

 whose variations can not necessarily l)c 

 eom])ared to the differences between 

 one female and another. The posterity 

 of some females will comjjrise nothing 

 but gray and white individuals; but 

 that of others will show, in addition, 

 yellows, blacks, strijjed grays, striped 

 blacks, etc. Often, if the matings were 



■■' This color is technically known as agouti, and is considered to be the ancestral color of many 

 small mammals, including mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs. — The Editor. 



