Rabaud: Telegony 



395 



how carefully we must avoid giving to 

 mere coincidences the value of evidence, 

 in this inquisition. 



One more fact should be emphasized. 

 It might happen that a colt without any 

 visible resemblance, in form, to a zebra, 

 should yet have something of the zebra 

 in its constitution; this would then 

 show itself, or at least might show itself, 

 in the progeny of the colt. Now the 

 mare Kathleen, foaled by Biddy subse- 

 quent to the birth of a hybrid, herself 

 foaled an absolutely pure colt. This 

 fact corroborates an analogous one of 

 Settegast. It should be added never- 

 theless that as the characters of the 

 zebra appear to be "dominant" in all 

 crosses with the horse, this objection 

 has only slight weight; since if there 

 were any stripes or other anatomical 

 characters transmitted, they ought to 

 appear in the first generation. 



CONFIRMATORY PROOFS. 



Besides, the not less important in- 

 vestigation of Faltz-Fein and H. Ivanov 

 (1913) confirms all the preceding con- 

 clusions. In no case did colts born 

 after hybrids show any indications of 

 influence of the zebra. And yet two of 

 the mares {Litvinka and Priimikha) 

 were in a position to have shown effects, 

 if it were possible, of having been 

 strongly impregnated, because one of 

 them had been bred five times and the 

 other three times to a zebra. Table II 

 siimmarizes this investigation. 



Outside of horses, we possess experi- 

 ments in i\A\ agreement with these: 

 Faelli (1900) reports the case of a 

 Tam worth sow successively bred to a 

 Tamworth boar, a Yorkshire boar, and 

 a second Tamworth boar; aU of the pigs 

 sired by the Yorkshire resembled him, 

 while all of the pigs by the second Tam- 

 worth male ^-esembled their sire without 

 the slightest trace of Yorkshire charac- 

 teristics. 



Cousin (1904) als:) cites a number of 

 cases. A shorthaired greyhound bitch 

 bred to a griffon produced a litter of 

 pups of varying aspects; later bred to a 

 male like herself, she produced pups 

 without the slightest appearance of the 

 former mate. A Saint Germain braque 



crossed with a spaniel produced a number 

 of pups which showed various evidences 

 of cross-breeding; later mated with a 

 male of her own breed, she produced a 

 litter of typically pure-bred pups. With 

 sheep. Cousin mated Berrichon ewes 

 successively with a merino ram and then 

 with a Berrichon ram; none of the prod- 

 ucts of this last mating showed the 

 slightest trace of merino blood. It is to 

 be remarked that the products of the 

 merino- Berrichon cross look very much 

 like the merino male, which means that, 

 in Mendelian language, the merino 

 characters are to some extent dominant 

 over the Berrichon characters; they 

 ought, therefore, to reappear in the 

 succeeding lambs of the ewe, if she had 

 really become impregnated. 



I come now to the experiments 

 carried out by Bond (1899) with rabbits 

 and white rats, and by Miss Barthelet 

 (1900) with white mice. 



Bond mated a Himalayan rabbit 

 (white with black feet) to a wild male, 

 and then to an albino male. The first 

 litter due to this last buck contained 

 several individuals of a gray tint; but 

 the following litters by the same male 

 contained only albino individuals, 

 although between each successive mating 

 with an albino male, there was a mating 

 with the wild buck. Were the gray 

 offspring of the albino male, at first 

 mating with him, due to the influence 

 exercised by the wild male which had 

 previously been bred to the female ? 

 That color is to rabbits like stripes to 

 horses. Rabbits of the Himalaya 

 breed possess pigment, because their 

 feet are black, and the vague tint 

 observed in the young is due to that 

 pigment, the existence of which can not 

 be disputed, much more certainly than 

 to any mysterious influence which 

 remains to be proved. It is even com- 

 mon that the crossing of a striped 

 animal with one not striped produces 

 offspring that are not striped, regardless 

 of their color; and this is the case here. 

 Besides, is it not remarkable that the 

 gray tint was not repeated in succeeding 

 litters, when conditions were most 

 favorable for impregnation ? 



