NON-FERTILITY AND LACTATION IN MULES. 81 



breeding mules, such a thing iis a fertile mule is unknown, 

 although these young mules are placed in the most favour- 

 able conditions for being mated, as they are constantly in 

 the pastures and on the marshes with the young horse 

 colts. M. Avrault's exact words are as follows : — 



" Nous ne rechercherons pas ce que cette opinion pent avoir de 

 fonde, mais ce que nous tenons a constater c'est que jamais en 

 Poitou on n'a entendu parler de la gestation de la mule, bien 

 que la, a part la temperature, elle se trouve dans les meilleures 

 conditions pour ctre fecondce, puisqu'elle est constamment en 

 contact, dans les pasturages, avec des ponlains (horse colts), qui 

 souvent les saillissent." (p. 152.) 



To this it may be replied that there is a well-known 

 instance in the Acclimatisation Gardens in Paris, where a 

 mule has produced foals when mated both Avith the horse and 

 the ass. As this is supposed to be the most authentic case 

 on record, it has been thought desirable to reproduce from 

 a photograph an exact representation of this supposed fertile 

 female mule, which has been most carefully drawn by Mr. 

 Frohawk. It is doubtful whether the animal is a mule. 

 There is but little mule character about her beyond the 

 slight increase in the size of the ears. The particulars of 

 her parentage are utterly unknown, and she was merely 

 alleged to be a mule by the Algerian natives who 

 sold her to the authorities in the gardens. It is not at all 

 improbable that her female parent had bred a mule in the 

 hrst instance, and, as in the well-known cases of mares 

 which have been mated with quaggas and zebras, her 

 subsequent progeny, when mated with a horse, shows some 

 trace of the first union. The late M. Ayrault, and most 

 persons who are really cognisant of the matter, regard this 

 animal not as a mule, but as an ordinary mare. She has 

 foaled l)oth to the ass and the horse. Her foals bred from 



G 



