TREATMENT OF BREEDING COWS. 233 



ascribed, and (in many such cases,) on good grounds, to some 

 state of the mother's mind, having a relation to that other ani- 

 mal, at or some time before the period of conception, or during 

 her pregnancy. It is conceivable, therefore, that in many cases, 

 — ^nay in every case, where an animal resembles another (not its 

 progenitor,) by which its mother had formerly borne offspring, — 

 that is to say, in the whole set of cases which form the subject 

 of these pages, — the resemblance may be explained quite as well 

 on the principle of mental influence, as on that of inoculation; 

 or, at least, that in ascribing it, with Mr. M'Gillavray, to the latter 

 cause, — or to any purely corporeal cause arising out of the prior 

 sexual intercourse, a manifest source of fallacy attaches to the 

 assumption. The phenomenon may really be resolvable, in any, 

 and in every instance, into an affair of the mother's mind. 



"The possibility, therefore, that mental influence may furnish 

 the true explanation of the phenomenon, at once raises a ques- 

 tion which bears so directly on the present subject, as to demand 

 consideration in connection with it. To consider it fully, ho-v,-- 

 ever, at this stage, would keep the test to be proposed for its 

 solution too long out of view. I shall, therefore, here content 

 myself with one example in illustration of this kind of influence. 

 "A mare and a horse (a gelding) had, for some years, worked 

 together on the same farm, occupied adjacent stalls in the same 

 stable, and pastured together in summer in the same fields. The 

 gelding was of a black color, with white legs and face, and had a 

 singular peculiarity in the form of the hind legs, which, when 

 the animal was standing, appeared quite straight, there being no 

 appearance of the leg being bent at the hough-joint, as in ordi- 

 nary cases ; the pasterns, likewise, were very long, so as to cause 

 the feet to look as if placed almost at right angles to the legs. • 

 After having been some years thus associated with this gelding, 

 the mare was covered with a stallion of the same color as her- 

 self — both stallion and mare being of a bay color, with black legs 



