TELEGONY AND REVERSION. 137 



sion, coming to a definite conclusion will be difficvilt — will 

 seem, in fact, to some next to impossible. 



I had not intended to consider at this stage the possible 

 causes of telegony, but as the result of "infection" (if it 

 occurs) will depend more or less on the method by which 

 it is produced — in other words, as the mode of "infection" 

 may determine whether the subsequent offspi-ing resemble 

 the previous sire or a remote ancestor, it is desirable to 

 refer briefly to some of the suggested explanations of the 

 supposed phenomenon. 



Sir Everard Home believed Lord Morton's mare pro- 

 duced striped foals to the black Arab horse because her 

 first mate — the quagga — had produced a profound and 

 lasting impression on her nervous system ; that she, as it 

 were, had. never quite succeeded in getting the quagga 

 out of her mind. Sir Everard tells us he considered the 

 markings on the subsequent offspring of Lord Morton's 

 mare as " one of the strongest proofs of the effect of the 

 mind of the mother upon her young that has ever been re- 

 corded."* If telegony is due to mental impressions, as 

 Sir Everard Home and many others since his day have 

 believed, the subsequent progeny might very well resemble 

 (I might almost say ought to resemble) the previous sire, 

 and not a remote ancestor. But although it is widely and 

 firmly believed that the offspring may be influenced through 

 " the mind of the mother," Sir Everard Home's is the least 

 likely of all the explanations hitherto suggested. 



Mr. Herbei't Spencer believes telegony is due to a kind 

 of pangenesis, that " while the reproductive cells multiply 

 and arrange themselves during the evolution [develop- 

 ment] of the embryo, some of their germ-plasm passes into 

 the . . . parental body," to eventually reach and be after- 

 wards included in the reproductive cells subsequently 

 formed. t This explanation has found favour with not a 

 few physiologists in the past, and is still seriously con- 

 sidered. But even granting the possibility of this indirect 



* ' Home Lectures on Comparative Anatomy,' vol. iii, p. 307, 1823. 

 f Contemporary Review, March, 1893. 



