INADEQUACY OF NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 045 



conception is, it is impossible to say; but the fact is incontestable. The san c 

 influence is observed in the human subject. A woman may have, by a second 

 husband, children who resemble a former husband, and this is particularly 

 well marked in certain instances by the colour of the hair and eyes. A white 

 woman who has had children by a negro may subsequently bear children to a 

 white man, these child.en presenting some of the unmistakable peculiarities 

 of the negro raco." " 



Dr. Youmans called on Professor Flint, who remembered " investi- 

 gating the subject at the time his larger work was written [the 

 above is from an abridgment], and said that he had never heard 

 the statement questioned." 



Some days before I received this letter and its contained quo- 

 tation, the remembrance of a remark I heard many years ago con- 

 cerning dogs, led to the inquiry whether they furnished analogous 

 evidence. It occurred to me that a friend who is frequently 

 appointed judge of animals at agricultural shows, Mr. Fookes, 

 of Fair-field, Pewsey, Wiltshire, might know something about the 

 matter. A letter to him brought various confirmatory state- 

 ments. From one "who had bred dogs for many years" he 

 learnt that 



" It is a well known and admitted fact that if a bitch has two litters by 

 two different dogs, the character of the first father is sure to be perpetuated 

 in any litters she may afterwards have, no matter how pure-bred a dog may 

 be the begetter." 



After citing this testimony, Mr. Fookes goes on to give illus- 

 trations known to himself. 



" A friend of mine near this had a very valuable Dachshund bitch, which 

 most unfortunately had a litter by a stray sheep-dog. The next year her 

 owner sent her on a visit to a pure Dachshund dog, but the produce took quite 

 as much of the first father as the second, and the next year he sent her to 

 another Dachshund with the same result. Another case : A friend of mine 

 in Devizes had a litter of puppies, unsought for, by a setter from a favourite 

 pointer bitch, and after this she never bred any true pointers, no matter of 

 what the paternity was." 



[Since the publication of this article additional evidences have com* to 

 hand. One is from the late Prof. Rilcy, State Entomologist at Washington, 

 who says that tclegony is an "established principle among well-educated 

 farmers " in the United States, and who gives me a case in horse-breeding to 

 which he was himself witness. 



Mr. W. P. Smith, writing from Stoughton Grange, Guildford, but giving 

 the results of his experiences in America, says that " the fact of a previous 

 conception influencing subsequent offspring was so far recognised among 

 American cattle-breeders " that it was proposed to raise the rank of any 

 heifer that had borne a first calf by a thoroughbred bull, and though this 

 resolution when brought before one of the chief societies was not carried, 

 yet on all sides it was admitted that previous conceptions had effects of 

 the kind alleged. Mr. Smith in another letter says: "When I had a 

 large mule and horse ranche in America I noticed that the foals of mares 



* A Text Book of Human Physiology. By Austin Flint, M.D., LL.D. 

 Fourth edition. New York: D. Ap'pleton & Co. 1888. Page 797. 

 42 



