Ixxviii GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 



the descendants of these mares, a single case of undoubted 

 infection is obtained, the fact of telegony will be estab- 

 lished ; if, on the othei- hand, not one out of a hundred 

 foals " harks back " " infection/' if it occurs at all, may 

 be treated as a negligible quantity. 



In addition to the experiments with mares, I have been 

 on the outlook for evidence in favour of telegony in 

 rabbits and dogs, fowls and pigeons, I first made sure 

 that six white rabbit does produced white young to white 

 bucks. The white does were then crossed with wild 

 bucks, with the result, as already stated, that they brought 

 forth over forty young that could with difficulty be dis- 

 tinguished from wild rabbits. When next bred with a 

 white buck, they all produced perfectly white young, 

 proving, as far as colour could show, that none of the 

 does had been infected. I propose making further ex- 

 periments with rabbits next summer. 



The results obtained with fowls and pigeons also failed 

 to give any support to the telegony hypothesis. The 

 experiments with dogs already completed, have not sup- 

 ported the deep-rooted and wide-spread belief that, in 

 dogs, at least one of the subsequent offspring almost 

 invariably takes after the first (or previous) sire if it 

 happens to be a mongrel, or to belong to a different breed 

 from that of the dam. 



SATURATION. 



Almost identical with telegony is the saturation hypo- 

 thesis. Bruce Lowe, the prophet, if not the originator 

 of the saturation theory, defines it as follows : — '' Briefly 

 put, it means that with each mating and bearing the dam 

 absorbs some of the nature or actual circulation of the 

 yet unborn foal, until she eventually becomes saturated 

 with the sire's nature or blood, as the case may be."* 

 That something of this kind occurs in the human family 

 is also widely believed. Bruce Lowe, I understand, 

 * Bruce Lowe, ' Breeding on tlie Figure System,' 



