94 BREEDING AND REARING 



The late Dr. Hugh Smith (who was a sportsman of no 

 mean celebrity) has related a similar instance of a very fa- 

 vourite female setter that followed his carriage. Travelling- 

 in the country, she became suddenly so enamoured of a 

 mong-rel that followed her, that, to separate them, he was 

 forced, or rather his anger irritated him, to shoot the mon- 

 grel, and he then proceeded on his journey. The image of 



pletely different forms and kinds proceed from one litter, superfoetation has 

 occurred, and not mental influence. The Rev. R. Lascelles, in his Letters 

 on Sporting, p. 250, relates a case of a greyhound bitch, entrusted to the care 

 of a servant, which vehelped one perfect greyhound and six complete curs : 

 the curs were the likeness of the dog she domesticated with in common ; the 

 single one resembled the greyhound she was taken to during her heat. There 

 is little reason, therefore, to doubt that the bitch had been previously lined 

 by the cur, and the single greyhound pup was the effect of superfoetation. 

 I mention this to shew how easy this mistake between two different causes 

 may occur, and how they may be distinguished. I was not fortunate enough 

 to rear either of my white puppies: the late Lord Kelly offered me fifteen 

 guineas for one of them at three months old. 



Lord Morton bred from a male quagga and a chesnut mare. The mare 

 was afterwards bred from by a black Arabian horse ; but still the progeny 

 exhibited, in colour and mane, a striking resemblance to the quagga. 

 D. Giles, Esq. had a sow of the black and white kind, which was bred from 

 by a boar of the wild breed, of a deep chesnut colour : the pigs produced by 

 this intercourse were duly mixed, the colour of the boar being in some very 

 predominant. The sow was afterwards bred from by two of Mr. Western's 

 boars, and in both instances chesnut marks were prevalent in the litter, 

 which, in other instances, had never presented any appearance of the kind. — 

 Phil. Trans. 1821. 



The former cases tend to confirm what I have before remarked, that the 

 mental influence excited on these occasions extends less to the internal 

 organization than to the external characters of colour and covering. The 

 following will, however, shew, that impressions from terror may sink so deep 

 as to affect the organization also of the progeny. In the Linnjean Society of 

 London is found an account, by Mr. Milne, of a pregnant cat, his own pro- 

 perty, the end of whose tail was trodden on with so much violence, as, appa- 

 rently, to give the animal intense pain. When she kittened, five young ones 

 appeared, perfect in every other respect except the tail, which was, in each 

 one of them, distorted near the end, and enlarged into a cartilaginous knob. — 

 i/w. Zran^., vol. i?c, p. 323. 



