156 TELEGONY 



of the father, therefore " no evidence of any steady telegenic 

 influence." 



But an increasing hereditary influence of the same father 

 seems to us rather different from the precise point at issue in the 

 controversy over the occurrence or non-occurrence of telegony. 

 It must be remembered that the bias of the child this way or that 

 depends on the relative potency of the various items in the 

 paternal and maternal contributions to the fertilised egg-cell, 

 and that this relative potency may be affected by a variety of 

 circumstances e.g. the relative age or vigour of the gametes at 

 the time of amphimixis. 



Careful comparisons of the families of the same mother by two 

 successive husbands would be interesting especially if there 

 be anything in the suggestion that the telegonic influence is an 

 influence exerted on the mother during gestation by the previous 

 offspring, rather than directly through the previous father. 



8. The Widespread Belief in the Occurrence of Telegony 



The belief that offspring sometimes resemble not so much 

 " the father, but an earlier mate of the mother," is widespread 

 among experienced breeders, and, like the belief in the influence 

 of maternal impressions upon the offspring, is probably very 

 ancient. Apart from stock, the belief is often expressed in 

 regard to man himself. " We certainly know that what used 

 to be spoken of as the ' infection of the germ,' but which, following 

 Weismann, we nowadays call ' telegony/ was considered possible 

 by physiologists at the end of the seventeenth century ; we know 

 the infection tradition has long influenced Arab breeders, and 

 that believers in this hypothesis may now be found in every 

 part of the world, more especially wherever an overlapping of 

 distinct races occurs as e.g. in the southern states of America 

 and in certain Turkish provinces. Further, until quite recently 

 many biologists considered that what is commonly and conveni- 



