320 EVOLUTION [Chap. V 



Letter 235 might give as a preliminary reason the publication in the 

 Transactions of the celebrated Morton case and the pig case 

 by Mr. Giles. You might also allude to the evident physio- 

 logical importance of such facts as bearing on the theory of 

 generation. Whether it would be prudent to allude to despised 

 pangenesis I cannot say, but I fully believe pangenesis will 

 have its successful day. Pray ascertain carefully the colour 

 of the dam and sire. See about duns in my book [Animals 

 and Plants'], Vol. I., p. 55. The extension of the mane and 

 form of hoofs are grand new facts. Is the hair of your horse 

 at all curly ? for [an] observed case [is] given by me (Vol. II., 

 p. 325) from Azara of correlation of forms of hoof with curly 

 hairs. See also in my book (Vol. I., p. 55 ; Vol. II., p. 41) 

 how excessively rare stripes are on the faces of horses in 

 England. Give the age of your horse. 



You are aware that Dr. Carpenter and others have tried 

 to account for the effects of a first impregnation from the 

 influence of the blood of the crossed embryo; but with 

 physiologists who believe that the reproductive elements are 

 actually formed by the reproductive glands, this view is incon- 

 sistent. Pray look at what I have said in Domestic Animals 

 (Vol. I., pp. 402-5) against this doctrine. It seems to me 

 more probable that the gemmules affect the ovaria alone. 

 I remember formerly speculating, like you, on the assertion 

 that wives grow like their husbands ; but how impossible to 

 eliminate effects of imitation and same habits of life, etc. 

 Your letter has interested me profoundly. 



P.S. — Since publishing I have heard of additional cases — 

 a very good one in regard to Westphalian pigs crossed by 

 English boar, and all subsequent offspring affected, given in 

 Illust. Landtuirth-Zeitung, 1868, p. 143. 



I have shown that mules are often striped, though neither 

 parent may be striped, — due to ancient reversion. Now, 

 Fritz Mullcr writes to me from S. Brazil : " I have been 

 assured, by persons who certainly never had heard of Lord 

 Morton's mare, that mares which have borne hybrids to an ass 

 are particularly liable to produce afterwards striped ass-colts." 

 So a previous fertilisation apparently gives to the subsequent 

 offspring a tendency to certain characters, as well as characters 

 actually possessed by the first male. 



In the reprint (not called a second edition) of my Domestic 



