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Ixviii GENERAL INTEODnCTION. 



reformers and physicians^ have also adopted and tena- 

 ciously hold to the "infection" hypothesis, is less 

 comprehensible. If one may judge from the attitude of 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer, and of certain members of th 

 Congress of Zoology which recently met at Cambridge, 

 and from the sayings of the literary prophet "At the 

 Sign of the Ship,"* Wcismann, and other biologists who 

 persist in their " scepticism," may prepare for the worst. 

 Evidently, if experiments bearing on telegony fail to 

 prove that it occurs at least occasionally amongst mam- 

 mals, it will be all the worse for science and the workers 

 in the telegony corner of the scientific vineyard. 



Since I turned my attention specially to the subject 

 in 189-i I have, in addition to making experiments likely 

 to give telegony the best possible chance of declaring 

 itself, investigated a large number of alleged cases of 

 "infection." The result, so far, is that the evidence in 

 support of undoubted " infection " having ever occurred 

 is most unsatisfactory. In every case investigated the 

 supposed infection could be accounted for by the rela- 

 tively simple reversion hypothesis, and the same hj'po- 

 thesis I am now satisfied is sufficient to account for what 

 at first appeared as evidence of telegony in my own 

 experiments. I do not by any means say telegony is 

 impossible, that it never has occuried in the past, and 

 never will occur in the future; but I think I am justified 

 in saying " iufectiou " has never been experimentally 

 produced, and that the kind of "infection" so widely 

 believed in by breeders, if not impossible, is at least 

 extremely improbable — as iuiprobable as the almost 

 equally common belief that the colour of the offspring 

 may be influenced by " mental impressions," as Laban's 

 sheep aud cattle are said to have been influenced by the 

 peeled wands placed before them by his son-in-law, 

 Jacob. 



What breeders understand by " infection " will be 

 best gathered from a few examples. The racc-hoi's 

 Bhiir Atliol had a very characteristic "blaze," i.e. a 

 * Sec Loiif/maii's Magazine, October, 18'JS. 



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