152 TELEGONY 



(c) Another suggestion explains away the alleged facts of tele- 

 gony by referring them to maternal impression, the supposition 

 being that the mental image, etc., produced in the mother by 

 the first sire exerts an influence on subsequent germs or on their 

 development after fertilisation by another sire. There is little 

 to be said in favour of this interpretation ! 



§ 6. Suggestions as to how a Telegonic Influence might be effected 



(a) It is well known that in most European bats sexual union 

 usually occurs in autumn, but the spermatozoa are simply 

 stored in the uterus, ovulation and fertilisation taking place 

 in spring after the winter sleep. A somewhat similar retention 

 of stored spermatozoa, which become operative long after 

 impregnation, is familiar in insects : thus, in some queen bees 

 the store has been known to last for two or three years, and 

 Sir John Lubbock gives the remarkable instance of an aged 

 queen ant which laid fertile eggs thirteen years after the last 

 union with a male. From a consideration of such facts the 

 suggestion has emerged that the second offspring are really 

 fertilised by persistent spermatozoa derived from the first sire. 



Weismann (1893, p. 385) suggests the possibility that " sper- 

 matozoa had reached the ovary after the first sexual union had 

 occurred, and had penetrated into certain ova which were still 

 immature." When these ova mature amphimixis might occur, 

 and coincide in time with a second coitus to which the subse- 

 quent offspring would be ascribed. 



But were this the explanation, we should sometimes find, 

 as Weismann remarks, that offspring were produced without 

 any second sire at all. No such phenomenon is known among 

 higher animals. 



Moreover, there is no warrant for supposing that spermatozoa 

 can persist as such through a period of gestation. " There is 

 abundant evidence," Prof. Cossar Ewart says, " that in the 



