THE CORRECT PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING ANIMALS. 523 
in unallied species, and shewn how varieties might easily, by 
accidents of climate, soil, and circumstances, be originated and 
multiplied, we have only to shew the effects of cross-breeding 
in another and somewhat new point of view, which has recently 
attracted the attention of breeders ; and the whole embraces a 
subject so thoroughly novel, and so little investigated, that it 
deserves more than a passing mention. 
Has cross-breeding any effect on the mother herself after- 
wards! Professor Simonds, at the lecture at York, on the Re- 
production of Animals, entered upon the effect of crossing on 
female animals, but mainly in reference to the supposed pe- 
culiar love which a female animal might have to some particular 
male, which might be observed to have such a mysterious in- 
fluence on the yet immature ovae as to stamp his likeness upon 
them as well as upon the immediate results of the union. 
This was followed up by a paper in The VETERINARIAN, 
by James M'Gillavray, V.S., of Heurtley, who quoted some of 
the same facts, and others, to shew that “ when a pure animal 
of any breed has been pregnant to an animal of a different breed, 
such pregnant animal is herself a cross ever after, the purity of 
her blood being lost in consequence of her connexion with the 
foreign animal.” He very ingeniously argues that, from the 
construction of the reproductive organs of the female animal — 
especially in the bovine race — there is an intimate connexion 
between the mother and her offspring during the whole period 
of gestation ; that the blood of the young circulates through the 
veins of the mother, as well as vice versa ; and that there is, in 
fact, the most complete interchange possible of the qualities of 
the sire with the dam through the medium of the offspring. 
More recently, Dr. Hervey, in a pamphlet on Cross-Breed- 
ing ,* says : “ There is a circumstance connected with the pro- 
cess of breeding, in the higher classes of animals, which seems 
to me to merit a larger share than it has yet received of the 
attention of the agricultural body. It is this — that a male 
animal that has once had fruitful connexion with a female, may 
so influence her future offspring begotten by other males as, to 
a greater or less extent, to engraft upon them his own distinctive 
features; his influence thus reaching to the subsequent progeny, 
in whose conception he has himself had no share, and his image 
and superscription being, so to speak, more or less highly in- 
scribed upon them.” 
Now, in proof of this position — a careful and guarded one 
certainly, and hard to gainsay, it must be admitted — a great 
* “ A Remarkable Effect of Cross Breeding;” by Alexander Harvey, M.D., 
lecturer on the Practice of Medicine in the University and King’s College, 
Aberdeen, &c. Edinburgh : Blackwood. 
