Characters, Hereditary and Acquired. 147 



necessitated the surrender of this research to other 

 hands, with a consequent delay in its commencement. 

 My ignorance of the unfortunate peculiarity dis- 

 played by rabbits in not throwing intermediate 

 characters has led to a further waste of time in 

 another line of experiment. On finding that mam- 

 malian ovaries did not admit of being grafted, it 

 seemed to me that the next best thing to try would be 

 the transplantation of fertilized ova from one variety 

 to another, for the purpose of ascertaining whether, 

 if a parturition should take place under such circum- 

 stances, gestation by the uterine mother would affect 

 the characters of the ovum derived from the ovarian 

 mother — she, of course, having been fertilized by a 

 male of her own variety. Of course it was necessary 

 that both the mothers should be in season at about the 

 same time, and therefore I again chose rabbits, seeing 

 that in the breeding season they are virtually in a 

 chronic state of "heat." I selected Himalayans and 

 Belgian hares, because they are well-marked varieties, 

 breed true, and in respect of colour are very different 

 from one another. It so happened that while I was 

 at work upon this experiment, it was also being tried, 

 unknown to me, by Messrs. Heape and Buckley who, 

 curiously enough, employed exactly the same material. 

 They were the first to obtain a successful result. 

 Two fertilized ova of the Angora breed having been 

 introduced into the fallopian tube of a Belgian hare, 

 developed there in due course, and gave rise to two 

 Angora rabbits in no way modified by their Belgian 

 hare gestation ^. 



* Proc. R. S. 1890, vol. xlviii. p. 457. It should be stated that the 

 authors do not here concern themselves with any theory of heredity. 



L 2 



