THE CORRECT PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING ANIMALS. 525 
had produced the previous year from a wild boar of a dun or 
deep chestnut colour : in this cross, as is common in violent 
changes in pigs, some resembled the male and some the female 
parent; but the year afterwards she was put to one of Mr. 
Western’s boars, and the result was that the litter had chestnut 
marks very distinctly upon them, which they had never had 
before. 
Take a sample from the cow, again, in corroboration of the 
principle. A case is quoted of a farmer who put a pure Aber- 
deenshire heifer to a short-horn bull, to which she had, of course, 
a cross calf. The following season she was put to a pure-bred 
bull of her own kind, and could have had no other intercourse. 
A cross-breed animal was produced, having horns, though both 
its parents were hornless. 
Several other facts, equally strong, might be quoted from one 
or other of these authorities, which seem to make out the pro- 
position, if not that laid down by Mr. M'Gillavray, at least that 
propounded by Dr. Harvey. But there is another class of facts 
mentioned by the same parties, which will go further, and will 
render the principle much more difficult to comprehend. 
How true soever' may be the principle that an animal, once a 
mother by a male of a different breed, will herself be a cross for 
ever after, or how far soever it may be considered as proved by 
the facts adduced by physiologists, as we before hinted, there is 
a class of facts even still more astounding ; and these not any 
new or recently discovered circumstances, but as old almost as 
primeval history can carry us back. 
They are these — that an animal may produce young unlike 
their actual parent-sire, and like another animal with which it 
is impossible that the female could have had any intercourse. 
This is true of cattle, of horses, and of swine. Simonds w r ould 
solve it on the principle of affection for particular animals enter- 
tained by the mother; other writers refer it to an effect upon the 
imagination of the mother, of a very intense kind. It has long 
been stated that breeders of farming-horses place a painting of a 
piebald or skew-balled animal in the crib or stall of the brood- 
mare, and the foal is marked with the identical spots of the 
picture. 
Whether it was a knowledge of this principle, arising from 
his skill as a shepherd, by the wily progenitor of the Jews — or 
whether he was supernaturally taught for the first time the 
wonderful tendency — whether, in fact, he availed himself of his 
knowledge in the same way as Bakewell and Collins — or 
whether a degree of special instruction in an art necessary to 
raise him to be the head of a selected people which should be 
the wonder of the world in all ages, we shall not stop to inquire. 
