TREATMENT OF BREEDING COWS. 237 



"Such cases as several of those now cited, can scarcely fail to 

 recall to the reader's mind the story, given in the book of Gene- 

 ^is, of Jacob and his peeled rods, and the effect of these in 

 causing the flocks, before whom they were placed at the time of 

 conception, to bring forth ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted 

 cattle. 



"It does not appear from the sacred narrative whether the 

 influence of the rods was exerted on the minds both of the male 

 and female cattle, or confined to those of the female. 



"All that need be said, in the way of direct inference from 

 the facts here brought together, may be comprised within a nar- 

 row compass. 



"Supposing the statements respecting them to be authentic 

 and no question, I apprehend, as to this can well be raised the 

 cases are nearly unequivocal. The only fallacy that can attach 

 to them, is that arising from the possibility, that the peculiarities 

 in the progeny were either purely accidental, or owing to corres- 

 ponding qualities latent in the parents, but breaking out in the 

 offspring. The relation, however, in most of the cases, between 

 the peculiarities in question and their presumed causes, is too 

 close and of too special a character to admit of either supposi- 

 tion. We are, therefore, well entitled, I think, to regard the 

 greater number, if not the whole of them, as examples of mental 

 causes, so operating either on the mind of the female, and so 

 acting on her reproductive powers, or on the mind of the male 

 parent, and so influencing the qualities of his semen, as to modify 

 the nutrition and development of the offspring. 



"How, in respect of the female, this influence is exerted, and 

 what the conditions of its action, it is not easy to determine. 

 The mental affections seem to have been in most of the cases, 

 and were probably in all of them, of a strong and enduring kind ; 

 and we can easily conceive this to have been essential to the 

 result. That the alteration in the growth of the foetus was 



