BIRTH-MARKS AND TELEGONY 401 



at birth, and these were few and indistinct. They dis- 

 appeared when the foal's coat was shed. Their mothers 

 were Highland mares. But the value of the faint 

 striping in these three instances as evidence in support 

 of telegony is at once destroyed by the fact that Professor 

 Ewart obtained at the same time pure-bred foals from 

 similar Highland mares which had never seen a zebra. 

 Two of these pure-bred Highland foals showed stripes 

 at birth, and one acquired stripes later; and further, 

 whilst the stripes on the foals born after hybrids had 

 been produced by their mothers disappeared with the 

 foal's coat, the stripes on the three pure-bred colts whose 

 mothers had never been near a zebra persisted for a 

 longer period. Similar experiments confirmed these 

 results, showing that traces of striping are no more likely 

 to occur on the offspring of a mare which has previously 

 produced a mule with a zebra or an ass, than on one 

 whose dam has neither seen nor been near to a zebra 

 or an ass. Lord Morton's case thus falls to the 

 ground. 



Breeders of dogs are (or were) even more thoroughly 

 convinced of the fact of telegony than breeders of horses. 

 But Sir Everett Millais, who devoted thirty years to the 

 breeding of dogs and experiments on this question, states 

 that he has never seen a case of telegony. And recent 

 experiments of the most definite kind support his con- 

 clusion. Dalmatians, deerhounds, and retrievers have 

 been used in these experiments. Many such experiments 

 in telegony are accidentally or unwittingly made every 

 year with dogs. An undesired crossing of two breeds 

 takes place, but when subsequent pure breeding takes 

 place no " telegonic " infection of the mother is observed. 

 Cases believed to be due to telegony have on examina- 

 tion proved to be due to the carelessness of stablemen, 

 26 



