WILD LIFE 87 



round face and staring eyes had caused that deformed 

 owlish countenance in the lamb. 



His story did not surprise me, although monstrosities 

 of that kind, which are the result of what my friend 

 Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers has called (in the human 

 subject) "pre-natal suggestion," are comparatively rare 

 among the lower animals. My beUef is that they are 

 very much more frequent among domestic than among 

 wild animals, and that they are more common than 

 we think. Not one case in a hundred is ever heard 

 of, and when we do hear of one we are satisfied to 

 classify it as a " freak of nature." This, however, does 

 not explain the fact that a cow, or sheep, or cat, or 

 some other creature, will occasionally produce an off- 

 spring in the likeness of another very different animal. 

 This same shepherd had another case in his flock. 

 This was of a lamb clothed in a brown fur instead of 

 wool — the fur, in fact, of a hare, and his belief was 

 that the ewe, when pregnant, had been frightened by 

 a hare suddenly jumping out of the heather or bushes 

 where it had been crouching. 



What did surprise me was that this man, with only 

 the light of nature to go by, had found the right 

 interpretation of these strange cases. With regard to 

 the first case, I asked him where on the downs could 

 a sheep ever see an owl. He then told me that a 

 good many owls had always inhabited the largest 

 furze patches, and that he had seen the birds closely 

 on a good many occasions in the summer months, and 



