BIRTH-MARKS AND TELEGONY 397 



it, as shown by the story of the patriarch Jacob, who, 

 wishing to obtain the birth of spotted or parti-coloured 

 lambs from a herd of sheep, placed in front of the 

 breeding ewes stakes or rods from which he had removed 

 the bark in rings, so as to make them parti-coloured. 

 He was supposed to have been successful in this way in 

 impressing the visual sense of the maternal ewes with 

 11 parti-colouration," and the belief was that they in con- 

 sequence produced dappled or parti-coloured lambs. 

 The belief, though not general, is widespread among 

 simple folk that such influences can and do act on 

 animals, and it has been, and is by some, similarly held 

 that a human mother may be influenced by surrounding 

 objects, so that if her surroundings are beautiful she will 

 produce a beautiful child. There is absolutely no ground 

 for this belief — based upon experiment. It is merely an 

 unreasoning assumption of " after this, therefore because 

 of this," based upon the incomplete observation of a few 

 accidental cases of vague coincidence and a tenacious 

 clinging to the belief that it is so because it is difficult 

 to prove that it is not so. No trustworthy investigation 

 or experiment on the subject is on record. 



But this unwarranted, untested belief, originating 

 among barbarous peoples, has led further, owing to the 

 inveterate love of marvels still common among us, to 

 the notion (surviving to the present day) that the ir- 

 regular coloured or obscure marks sometimes found on 

 the skin of a child at birth, and vaguely resembling an 

 animal or a fruit, or what not, are due to the mother 

 having recently seen, under some sudden and startling 

 circumstances, the object which the " birth-mark " on the 

 child resembles. Thus we have the following stories 

 related in a recent publication (" Sex Antagonism," by 

 Walter Heape, F.R.S.). The author holds that this 



