570 GENETICS IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE 



ice of a dark brown West Highland stallion which was also indistinctly 

 marked. 



In themselves these foals suggested as strongly that telegony might 

 occasionally occur as did those described by Lord Morton. But Ewart 

 tested the matter further by breeding two dark West Highland mares 

 closely related to Mulatto to the same black Arabian stallion which had 

 sired the striped foal. Two foals were produced, one of which possessed 

 the same sort of indistinct markings as those characteristic of the foals of 

 Mulatto, the other was much more distinctly striped. There can be no 

 question, therefore, that the striping of Mulatto's foals was a consequence 

 of normal hereditary processes having nothing to do with telegony. 



Further evidence as to the non-tenability of the doctrine of telegony 

 might be cited from the Penycuik experiment. A vast amount of ad- 

 ditional evidence has been obtained from other experiments, some of 

 which have been performed with the distinct object of testing the 

 doctrine, others for different purposes. The experiments of Baron de 

 Parana with zebra hybrids closely paralleled those of Ewart and yielded 

 likewise no evidence in support of the doctrine of infection. The series 

 of photographs shown in Figs. 222 to 225 have been drawn from an article 

 by Rommel describing the work of the U. S. government with hybrids 

 between different species of Equus. Here again there is no evidence 

 that Georgia the Morgan filly which Baby Gates produced subsequently 

 to the production of the zebra hybrid Juno shows any effect of the pre- 

 vious impregnation. The apparent stripes on the body of Georgia, it may 

 be mentioned in passing, are merely her ribs showing through. Similarly 

 there is no evidence that Sweepstakes, the dam of Star Pointer and other 

 pacers, was in any way influenced by the fact that previously she had 

 borne two mule foals. The evidence from mule-breeding establishments, 

 in which thousands of mules have been produced, in every dependable 

 instance is against the doctrine of telegony. Mumford has recorded 

 a large number of concrete cases in support of this position. In a few 

 instances mares had produced as high as ten or eleven mule foals before 

 they were bred to stallions, yet in not a single case was there positive 

 evidence of telegony. 



The development of the Mendelian theory of heredity has robbed 

 most of the old evidence for telegony of all its value. An instance which 

 Ewart quotes is of considerable interest in this connection. A tan Dachs- 

 hund bitch was bred to a tan dog, and produced a litter of puppies 

 having pure white bodies and tan cheeks and ears. Now this bitch had 

 previously borne by misalliance a litter of puppies to a white Fox terrier 

 with tan cheeks and ears. Presumably both the tan Dachshund bitch 

 and dog had long lines of tan or black and tan ancestors ; what more natu- 

 ral than to conclude that this was a strict case of telegony? But the 



