Novembers, 1919] 



NATURE 



217 



of the first mate penetrated the immature ova and 

 eventually took part in controlling- the develop- 

 ment of offspring by subsequent mates. 



Up to the end of last century Lord Morton's 

 experiments with a male quagga and a young 

 chestnut seven-eighths Arabian mare were re- 

 garded as affording- strong evidence of telegony. 

 Hence at the outset I decided to repeat as accur- 

 .ately as possible Lord Morton's experiment. The 

 quagga being extinct, a Burchell zebra was mated 

 with Arab and other mares belonging to different 

 breeds and strains. The mares, after producing 

 one or more hybrids, were mated with Arab and 

 other stallions. 



In an account of my experiments, illustrated by 

 numerous figures, published in the Transactions 

 of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scot- 

 land for 1902, it is pointed out that, though, to 

 start with, I believed there was such a thing as 

 telegony, I eventually came to the conclusion 

 that " there never has been an undoubted instance 

 of infection in either dogs, rabbits, or horses." 

 Though a full account of my investigations, by 

 Mr. Hermon C. Bumpus, appeared in the 

 American Naturalist (December, 1899), and an ab- 

 stract was published in the 1910 Report of the 

 United States Bureau of Animal Industry, it is 

 related in a recent American work on evolution ^ 

 that the idea of telegony " rests mainly upon what 

 are known as the Penycuik experiments (Ewart, 

 1899), the initial one of which was the impregna- 

 tion of a mare, ' Mulatto, ' by a quagga, a species 



of zebra whith is now extinct. The offspring of 

 this union was the foal ' Romulus, ' which showed 

 the quagga-stripes of his father very distinctly. 

 Later, ' Mulatto ' was bred to a pure Arab stallion 

 and her second foal also showed traces of stripes, 

 althoug-h by no means as distinctly as his half- 

 brother 'Romulus.' . . . Definite instances are 

 neither numerous nor well authenticated with the 

 exception of the one in question, and even this 

 may be due to some other cause." 



It is scarcely necessary to say that I am not 

 responsible for the idea of telegony — without going 

 far afield. Lull might have discovered that the 

 doctrine of "infection " had been dealt with by 

 Agassiz and was especially associated with a mare 

 belonging to Lord Morton — but it may be as well 

 to point out that I used a Burchell zebra (the 

 quagga had been extinct for nearly a quarter of a 

 century); that the hybrid "Romulus," instead of 

 being striped like his sire, approached in his mark- 

 ings the very richly striped zebra of Somaliland ; 

 and that the two subsequent foals of "Mulatto " 

 were decidedly less suggestive of zebras than 

 pure-bred foals of a near relative of " Mulatto " 

 who had never even seen a zebra. 



In igio, when giving a course of lectures in 

 Iowa, I gathered that the doctrine of telegony had 

 few adherents in America. This view is supported 

 by a statement in the recent work by Jordan 

 and Kellogg, who "think it probable that the 

 phenomena called telegony have no real exist- 

 ence." 



PROGRESS OF CHEMISTRY. 



By Sir Edw.^rd Thorpe, C.B., F.R.S. 



THE half-century which has elapsed since the 

 first issue of Nature has witnessed an 

 extraordinary development of science in general, 

 but in no department has it been more marked, 

 or the changes more profound, than in chemistry. 

 Before dealing with the period over which the 

 existence of this journal extends, it may not be 

 uninteresting to indicate, in the broadest possible 

 outline, the main features of progress in chemical 

 science to which the growth we have witnessed 

 during the last fifty years is in reality due. 



The opening years of the nineteenth century 

 constituted a new era in the history of chemical 

 science. The revolution initiated by Lavoisier 

 and his associates — Morveau, Laplace, Monge, 

 Berthollet, and Fourcroy — was by this time 

 accomplished, and its influence had extended 

 throughout Europe. The French chemists, who 

 emancipated chemistry from the thraldom of a 

 false German doctrine, swept phlogistonism into 

 the limbus fatuorum of extinct heresies. The 

 early years of that century saw the passing of 

 the more prominent adherents of Stahl's philo- 

 sophy ; of the English chemists, Priestley died 

 in 1804, and Cavendish, who for some years 



^ Lull, " Organic Evolution." (New York : The Macmiilan Co.) 

 NO. 2610, VOL. 104] 



previously had ceased to pursue chemical inquiry, 

 followed him six years later. 



Within the first quarter of the century appeared 

 some of the most eminent of those who were 

 destined to consolidate the principles upon which 

 the New Chemistry was founded. Dumas and 

 Wohler were born in 1800, Liebig in 1803, Graham 

 in 1805, Laurent in 1807, Gerhardt in 1816, Wurtz, 

 Kopp, and Marignac in 1817, Kolbe and Hofmann 

 in 1818, Pasteur in 1822, Alexander Williamson in 

 1824, and Edward Frankland in 1825. But there 

 was already a generation at work the members 

 of which, although not specially distinguished for 

 their direct contributions to speculative chemistry, 

 yet served by their labours to strengthen the 

 foundations upon which it is based ; among them 

 were Wollaston and Davy, born in 1766, and 

 Gay-Lussac, born in 1778. Berzelius, who was 

 born in 1779, first published his electro-chemical 

 theory in 1827. A revolution scarcely less 

 momentous than that of Lavoisier had, moreover, 

 by this time been effected by John Dalton ; the 

 enunciation of the atomic theory in 1807-8 wholly 

 altered the aspect of chemistry ; henceforth it was 

 brought within the domain of mathematics, and 

 its laws and processes were established on a 



