BREEDING. 35 



the chestnut color of the boar strongly prevailed. After this 

 boar had long been dead, the sow was put to a boar of her own 

 black and white breed, a kind which is well known to breed very 

 true and never to show any chestnut color, yet from this union 

 the sow produced some young pigs which were plainly marked 

 with the same chestnut tint as in the first litter." A black, hair- 

 less Barbary bitch was first impregnated by a mongrel spaniel 

 with long, brown hair, and produced five puppies, three of wdiich 

 were hairless and two covered with short, brown hair. The next 

 time she was put to a full black, hairless Barbary dog; but the 

 mischief had l)een implanted in the mother, and again about 

 half the litter looked like pure Barbarys and the other half like 

 the short-haired progeny of the first father. 



Professor Agassiz states that he experimented with a Xew- 

 foundland bitch by coupling her with a water dog, and the 

 progeny were j^artly water dog, partly Xewfoundland, and the 

 remainder a mixture of both. Future connections of the same 

 bitch with a greyhound produced a similar litter, with hardly a 

 trace of the greyhound. lie had bred rabbits with the laws es- 

 tablished by this experiment, and at last had so impregnated a 

 white rabbit with a gray rabbit that connection of this white 

 rabbit with a l)lack male invai'ial)ly produced gray. The same 

 influence is observed in chickens, and T might cite numliers of 

 incidents of this wonderful phenomenon of generation, but ihese 

 facts will suffice. These facts show tliat the act of fecundation 

 is not an act which is limited in its effects, but that it is an act 

 which affects the whole system, the sexual system especially, and 

 in the sexual system the ovary to be impregnated hereafter is so 

 modified by the first act that later impregnations do not efface 

 that first impression. Dr. ]\fanly Miles, in "Principles of Stock 

 Breeding," says: "It was formerly claimed that the peculiar 

 influence of the male was limited to the first impregnation of the 

 female only, but tlicre is good reason to believe that every im- 

 pregnation may leave its impression upon partly developed 

 germs, and be thus transmitted with the characters of a subse- 



