48 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



instances, with reference to so many animals, in such different 

 countries, and in such different ages, that the effect of a first 

 copiilation is felt, not only in the product resulting from that 

 connection, but in the products which result from subsequent 

 copulations, that the fact cannot be denied. If we take it 

 historically it is a thing which was known to the ancients ; it is 

 a thing which was known to the Jews, and so well known, that 

 in their law it was incorporated in this form — that if a woman 

 lost her husband, she was bound to marry her husband's brother, 

 and the children resulting from that second marriage were to 

 be the first man's children ; and the laws of inheritance of 

 Palestine were based on the fact, that there was such an 

 unmistakable impress made upon the woman by the first 

 connection she ever had, that it was not much out of the way 

 to consider that her children, even by a second husband, 

 belonged in a certain way to that first dead husband, who had 

 nothing to do, apparently, with the procreation of the later 

 children. But let us let Jewish law alone, and come to 

 animals ; and I will mention some facts of which I have special 

 cognizance. A mare was covered the first time by a zebra — an 

 animal of a character never to be mistaken — it is a horse with 

 transverse stripes over the body and a black bar along the 

 middle line of the back. The offspring of that connection was 

 a mule, a half-breed between a zebra and a mare. After that, 

 that mare had colts from a horse, and they were striped. 

 Whence came those stripes ? Certainly not from the second 

 copulation, for after the birth of the first offspring, that mare 

 never saw another zebra ; but when she was put to a horse, 

 and had a second colt, that colt was striped. I have seen, in 

 Mobile, the offspring of a mare, which had been put to a don- 

 key, and which had bred a mule first ; and afterwards she was 

 put to a horse and had a colt, which had a black bar along the 

 back. That was certainly a mark of the donkey. We have no 

 horse which has never had that influence with that distinct 

 longitudinal bar along the back and cross-bar over the shoulder. 

 That colt, born from a mare by a horse, which mare had had a 

 donkey before, I have seen myself. So here we have an instance 

 where the effect of a first connection is unmistakable. I have 

 seen examples of the same kind in dogs, within my own per- 

 sonal experience. A bitch of one breed, connected with a dog 



