GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 



I HAVE been frequently asked when an account is likely 

 to be published of the telegony and other experiments I 

 started some time ago at Penycuik.* As the problems 

 under consideration are not of a kind that can be settled 

 off-hand, and as one inquiry has begotten others, some 

 years must elapse before a complete and systematic 

 account is possible. 



For the information of those good enough to interest 

 themselves in some of the problems I have set myself 

 to solve, I have decided to issue in book form three 

 papers which have already been published. These papers, 

 with the help of this introduction (which must also serve 

 as a preface, and to a certain extent as a supplement), 

 will indicate the lines along which the inquiries are pro- 

 ceeding, and also the kind of answers likely eventually 

 to be made to some of the questions^ 



The first two papers deal with five of the zebra 

 hybrids I have bred; the third — which has grown out of 

 an address prepared nearly a year ago — deals chiefly with 

 reversion and telegony. 



The three papers having been written at different 

 times and for diiferent objects, a certain amount of re- 

 petition has been inevitable. This will, I think, prove 

 advantageous rather than otherwise ; it will at least help 

 in fixing in the mind of the reader the difference in 

 the arrangement of the stripes in the Burchell zebra 

 stallion " Matopo " from that in his hybrid offspring. 



* Penjcuik is pronounced (as it was often formerly spelt) Penuycook. 

 It means the hill of the cuckoo. Now the usual spelling is Penicuik, but 

 until comparatively recently, as in olden times, a " y " was almost in- 

 variably used. Whether the Post Office or the North British Railway 

 Company deserves most blame for the change it is hard to tell. 



b 



