46 THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. 



nation may take place at more than one warding, and that by dif- 

 ferent mates. The fact was long ago admitted by naturalists and 

 physiologists^: and from indisputable evidence we have, in several 

 instances, seen whelps of the same litter which bore evident marlcs 

 of different origin, and where the future disproportion in size and 

 character clearly evinced that more than one male was concerned 

 in the process. 



Antecedent impressions received have often an effect on the 

 progeny, — Superfoetation is apt to be confounded with, or its 

 phenomena are sometimes accounted for by, another process, still 

 more curious and inexplicable, but which is wholly dependent on 

 the mother ; where imprintings which have been received by her 

 mind previous to her sexual intercourse are conveyed to the germs 

 within her, so as to stamp one or more of them with characteristic 

 traits of resemblance to the dog from which the impression was 

 taken, although of a totally different breed from the real father of 

 the progeny. In superfoetation, on the contrary, the size, form, 

 &c. of the additional progeny all fully betoken their origin. In 

 these instances of sympathetic deviation, the form, size, and cha- 

 racter of the whelps are principally the mother's but the colour 

 is more often the father's. It would appear that this mental im- 

 pression, which is perhaps usually raised at some period of oestrum, 

 always recurs at that period, and is so interwoven with the or- 

 ganization even, as to become a stamp or mould for some if not 

 all of her future progeny ; the existence of which curious anomaly in 

 the reproductive or breeding system is confirmed by acts of not 

 unfrequent occurrence. I had a pug bitch whose constant com- 

 panion was a small and almost white spaniel dog, of Lord Rivers' 



' In the superfoetation of brutes, is there not reason to suppose that the 

 germ is contributed from each ovaria in succession ? or do the ova or germs 

 present themselves indiscriminately from both ? The interesting experiments 

 of Dr. Haighton, related in the Philosophical Transactions, 1797, p. 159, 

 and by Mr. Cruikshanks, ib. p. 197, tend to throw light on this curious sub- 

 ject Superfoetation seems extended also to the human ; instances of this are 

 recorded in Blumenbach's Institutions of Physiology, and in White's work 

 on the Regular Gradation of the Human Race. 



