Maternal Organs of Reproduction in Animals. 



251 



constitutions, and able to support their young, during the earliest 

 periods of their life. In these uncongenial seasons, the robust, 

 however, do not suffer to an extent sufficient to produce permanent 

 injury, as the range they take is extensive, and thus space makes 

 up for the local deficiency of herbage, and exercise overbalances 

 the sedative effects of cold. Many other reasons might be ad- 

 vanced were it necessary : these, however, are sufficient to show 

 that here we have nature's plan of selection, which man but imi- 

 tates in the care he bestows in pairing animals to breed together. 



There are several singular circumstances connected with this 

 division of our subject, and which may be here mentioned, al- 

 though their causes cannot now be discussed. To speak of the 

 existence of affection, or of favourable impressions in a female 

 towards a particular male of another variety, but of the same 

 species to which she belongs, being so strong as to influence the 

 form and colour of her offspring, the immediate produce of a 

 different male, appears to be very speculative, if not otherwise 

 objectionable. Love of animals to man is however an attri- 

 bute the possession of which will scarcely be denied to them. 

 We know but little of the affection they have for each other, nor 

 of its bounds or duration, and consequently it is difficult to say 

 whether the facts we shall mention do in reality depend upon it 

 or on the one sexual connexion with a favourite male exciting a 

 peculiar development in the still immature ova of the female. 

 The physiologist and the psychologist could each bring forward 

 many well-grounded arguments in favour of his particular view. 

 With these we have not now to do, and therefore we proceed to 

 narrate the cases themselves. The first is as follows : — " The Earl 

 of Morton., being desirous of obtaining a breed between the horse 

 and the quagga, selected a young mare of seven-eighths Arabian 

 blood, and a fine male of the latter species, and the produce was 

 a female hybrid. The same mare had afterwards, first a filly 

 and then a colt by a fine black Arabian horse. They both re- 

 sembled the quagga in the dark line along the back, the stripes 

 across the forehead, and the bars across the legs. In the filly the 

 mane was short, stiff, and upright, like that of the quagga ; in the 

 colt it was long, but so stiff as to arch upwards, and hang clear 

 of the sides of the neck. In other respects they were nearly pure 

 Arabian, as might have been expected from fifteen-sixteenths of 

 Arabian blood,"* The second case is analogous, but it occurred 

 in the pig : — " D. Giles, Esq., had a sow of the black and white 

 kind, which was bred from by a boar of the wild breed of a deep 

 chesnut colour : the pigs produced by this intercourse were duly 

 mixed, the colour of the boar being in some very predominant. 



* " Bell's British Quadrupeds," page 392. 



