526 THE CORRECT PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING ANIMALS. 
But the fact was that a special, an uncommon, a stray kind of 
production was allotted to him for wages, in the lambs of the 
flock and the calves of the herd. The odd brown lambs, and 
the spotted calves dropped, were to be his; while, lest any unfair 
influence should act on the mother, all in the herd or flock of 
these colours should be separated. Here, however, he practised 
the art of the breeder with consummate skill. He peeled white 
streaks on rods of poplar and hazel and chestnut, and placed 
them before the watering-troughs of the cattle when they 
paired, and the produce was ring-shaped, speckled, and spotted. 
But, with the discrimination and judgment of a breeder, he was 
too wise to do this to all the cattle. He selected the strongest 
and best; and, while the produce of the strong were of the ex- 
ceptional colour, those of the weak were the colour of nature. 
In the sheep he adopted a similar course. He turned the faces 
of the sheep at pairing-time towards his own brown flock, and a 
race of brown lambs was the result — accommodating his plans 
to the varying stipulations of his selfish father-in-law. 
Exactly in keeping with this is the story of Mr. Daniel, re- 
lated in his Rural Sports, of the late Dr. Hugh Smith. He 
had a favourite setter-bitch, Dido, travelling with him in the 
village of Midhurst, in Hants, who became suddenly much ena- 
moured with a very ugly culley-dog. Provoked at these fa- 
miliarities, he shot the cur, and had the bitch carried away on 
horseback; but she pined and fretted, and lost her appetite, and 
even her appreciation of scent. After this she was coupled 
with a well-bred setter, but the produce were a facsimile of the 
favourite cur; and this followed in every litter of pups which 
she afterwards bore. This would seem to be a complete in- 
stance of the effect of the imagination alone ; but in favour of 
Dr. Harvey’s theory there is this remote possibility — asserted, 
indeed, by Mr. M'Gillavray to have been the fact — that there 
might have been intercourse between the animals, and thus the 
alloy have been communicated to the animal. 
Of the same class is the fact related by Mr. Blaine, who had 
a pug-bitch, a great favourite and constant companion of a white 
spaniel-dog. These were kept separate at critical intervals, and 
she was warded by a dog of her own kind. A litter of fine 
puppies was the result of the union, and one was white and 
spaniel-like ; and, though the spaniel was given away, the two 
subsequent litters had the same peculiarity — one slender, white, 
spaniel-like dog, but less and less resembling him in each suc- 
ceeding litter. Here, again, there is no proof but that at some 
time or other an unobserved union had taken place. 
But if the fact related in the Quarterly Journal of Agricul- 
ture, in its very first volume, be correct, it would place the 
