248 



Lord Arthur Cecil and Dr. J. C. Ewart. 



with short, stiff, and upright, some months later it arched freely to 

 one side, as in my zebra hybrids, and later still it hung lank and close 

 to the neck. 



3. There is always an intimate relation in the Equidse between the 

 mane and the tail, when the mane is short and erect the upper third or 

 so of the tail is only covered with short hairs, which, like the hairs of 

 the mane, are annually shed. Lord Morton noticed nothing peculiar 

 about the tail of the " colts," and the tail of both the colt and filly in 

 Agasse's drawings is the tail of a high-caste Arab. This seems to me 

 to warrant the conclusion that the filly's mane had been hogged some 

 time before Lord Morton's visit. 



It thus appears that the evidence in support of the belief that Lord 

 Morton's mare was " infected " by the quagga is at the best far from 

 satisfactory. The same may be said of the evidence in support of all 

 the other supposed cases of telegony in the Equidse — of, amongst 

 others, Lord Mostyn's mare, referred to by Darwin •* of the mule-like 

 mare in the Paris Gardens, referred to by Tegetmeier and Sutherland ;f 

 and of the African ass {E quits asinus), still in the Zoological Gardens 

 (London), which now and then has a reddish-coloured foal, like the 

 cross-bred foal she produced in 1883 to an Asiatic ass (E. hemionus). 



Although I am now satisfied that Lord Morton's case throws little 

 light on the telegony hypothesis, like many others I had no very 

 decided views on the subject some years ago, and hence when ar- 

 ranging in 1894 to make a collection of horse embryos, I decided to 

 repeat, as far as circumstances permitted, what is commonly called 

 Lord Morton's experiment. For this purpose, I procured early in 

 1895 three zebras and a number of mares. Two of the zebras died 

 during the winter of 1895, but the third — a handsome stallion of the 

 Chapman variety (E. burchelli v. chapmctni) still survives and is now 

 thoroughly acclimatised. 



During 1895 I only succeeded in mating the zebra with one mare, 

 and hence there was only one hybrid born in 1896. During the last 

 two years however, quite a number of hybrids have made their appear- % 

 ance, and the dams of several of the hybrids have subsequently pro- 

 duced pure-bred foals. The time has hence come, when some of the 

 results of the experiments may with propriety be communicated 

 to the Royal Society. 



" II. Experiments with West Highland Ponies." By Lord Arthur 

 Cecil, Orchardmains, Kent, and J. C. Ewart. 



The first mare mated with the zebra was a black, West Highland 

 pony (Mulatto), set apart for the telegony experiments by Lord 



* ' Animals and Plants,' vol. 1, p. 435, 1875. 

 t ' Horses, Asses, and Zebras,' p. 81. 



