BIRTH-MARKS AND TELEGONY 405 



do not survive and produce ovules in a second year. 

 They are completely used up each year, and drop off 

 as " fruits " from the plant which bears them. With 

 many animals, however, the facts are otherwise. The 

 same mother produces from the ovary year after year 

 successive ovules, and it would thus be quite intelligible 

 that the fertilizing sperm of one year should frequently 

 have so affected or infected the egg-producing organ or 

 ovary as to result in the conveyance to the later crop 

 of egg cells separated from the ovary, some of the 

 qualities of the earlier male parent. These considera- 

 tions warrant the guess or " hypothesis " of telegony 

 in animals. But all such guesses must be put to the 

 proof, and not accepted simply because there is no 

 reason to conclude that they are impossible. As things 

 at present stand, there is no evidence, resulting either 

 from deliberate experiment or from exact observation 

 and record of the natural breeding of animals, to justify 

 us in holding, as an established fact, that the offspring 

 of a given sire and dam is, even in rare cases, affected 

 by the previous mating of the dam with another sire. 

 Naturalists would be deeply interested in the production 

 of even one indisputable instance of this occurrence. 



In connexion with this matter it is to be noted that 

 the sperm of one drone (her only mate) is retained in an 

 internal sac or pouch, alive and active, in the queen bee, 

 for some four or five years, and is used by her in succes- 

 sive seasons for fertilizing her eggs. Similarly it is 

 recorded by the late Lord Avebury that a queen ant kept 

 by him for fourteen years, without access to a male ant, 

 retained to the end of that period the power of producing 

 eggs which developed into worker ants. He concluded that 

 the sperm received fourteen years before by this queen from 

 a male ant remained all this time alive and ready for 



