60 TELEGONY AND REVERSION. 



horses of all kinds in Europe, and are almost unknown in 

 the case of Arabians. But what makes the case still 

 more striking is that in these colts the hair of the mane 

 resembled that of the quagga, "being short, stiff, and up- 

 right. Hence there can be no doubt that the quagga 

 affected the character of the offspring subsequently begot 

 by the black Arabian horse." "^ 



In the same chapter Darwin, referring to a horse bred 

 by Lord Mostyn from a mare that had previously borne a 

 foal to a quagga, says, " This horse is dun with a dark 

 stripe down the back, faint stripes on the forehead between 

 the eyes, plain stripes on the inner side of the fore-legs, 

 and rather more faint ones on the hind legs with no 

 shoulder-stripe. The mane grows much lower on the fore- 

 head than in the horse, but not so low as in the quagga or 

 zebra. The hoofs are proportionally longer than in the 

 horse, — so much so that the farrier who first shod this 

 animal, and knew nothing of its origin, said, ' Had I not 

 seen I was shoeing a horse I should have thought I was 

 shoeing a donkey. ' " It is especially worthy of note that 

 Darwin favoured the view that Lord Morton^s mare had 

 been infected, notwithstanding the fact that he had bred 

 and described a colt which for some weeks after birth was 

 marked over the body, legs, and face by numerous narrow 

 stripes. t Many cases of supposed infection in birds, and 

 still more in domestic mammals, have been put on record, 

 but none of them are in my opinion so striking as the 

 two just mentioned. 



One of the most industrious collectors of supposed cases 

 of telegony was Dr. Harvey of Aberdeen, who contributed 

 papers on this subject to the Monthly Journal of Medical 

 Science for the years 1849, 1850, and 1854, and published 

 in 1851 a pamphlet on 'A Eemarkable Effect of Cross-breed- 

 ing.' Harvey eventually persuaded himself that there was 

 such a thing as '^infection." He believed he had finally 

 raised the tradition to the rank of a fact, and accordingly 



* ' Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i, p. 435, IS?^. 

 t Loc. cit., vol. i, p. 60. 



