402 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



who have allowed a dog to escape temporarily from the 

 kennels or to enter them uninvited. The men have 

 attributed the mongrels so begotten to telegony in order 

 to conceal their negligence. 



Another curious case was that of a rickety spaniel 

 puppy, which was exhibited a few years ago at the 

 Zoological Society and believed by the exhibitor to owe 

 its bandy legs to " telegonic " infection of the mother by 

 a dachshund, with which she was supposed to have mated 

 a year or more before being put to the father of the 

 spaniel. Its true nature was at once recognized by the 

 experts present, the bandy legs being those caused by 

 " rickets," and not like those of the well-known dachshund 

 breed. 



It appears that the explanations widely prevalent of 

 many apparently strange things discussed in the preceding 

 chapters, such as live toads buried in rocks, the water- 

 finder's mystic rod, the coincidence of birth-marks and 

 maternal impressions, and the inheritance of offspring 

 from a previous mate of their dam, are hasty and un- 

 verified suppositions, which have never been properly 

 tested, and that when the wonder-provoking statements 

 made and the actual facts in question are properly and 

 sufficiently examined, according to the rules of evidence 

 and common sense, it is discovered that the assumption 

 of occult or exceptional causes in explanation of such 

 strange things is not justified, but that these strange 

 things owe their strangeness in large part to the incorrect 

 and incomplete observation of those who report them, 

 and to that love of marvel and mystery which, like hope, 

 springs eternal in the human breast. 



It is a remarkable proof of the reality of the belief 



