On the foetus in utero : as inoculating the maternal with the peculiarities of the paternal organism in a series of essays now first collected / by Alexander Harvey.

  • Harvey, Alexander, 1811-1889.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the foetus in utero : as inoculating the maternal with the peculiarities of the paternal organism in a series of essays now first collected / by Alexander Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    never produced a whelp which was not exactly similar to the un- fortunate cur who was her first and murdered lover. In Mr. Blaine's EncyclopsBclia of Rural Sports this other case is given :— The late Lord Rivers [says Mr. Blaine] was famed for a breed of black and white s])anieh, one of which, having more than the usual quantity of white, he presented to us. We had, at the same time, a img-UicU of great beauty. The attachment of this bitch to the spaniel was singularly strong. When it became necessary to separate her, on account of her heat, from this dog, and to con- fine her with one of her own kind, she pined excessively ; and, notwithstanding her situation, it was some time before she would admit the attentions of the pug-dog placed with her. At length, however, she was warded by him, impregnation followed, and at the usual period she brought forth five pug-puppies, o«e of tuhich was perfectly white, and rather more slender than the others, though a genuine pug. The spaniel was soon afterwards given away. At two subsequent litters (which were all she afterwards had) this bitch also brought forth a wliite pug-pup, which the fanciers know to be a very rare occurrence. It is also a curious fact that each succeeding white puppy was less slender in form than the preceding, though all were equally white.t The two cases now given have many points in common, and appear to be free from any material source of fallacy. In the former there was not even sexual intercourse—much less fruitful intercourse— between the bitch and the cur, to whom her progeny bore so decided a resemblance ; and in the latter, if intercourse occurred, which it appears did not, there * Daniel's Rural Sports, Vol. iii. pp. 333, 334.—A case very similar to the above, occurring in a bitch belonging to him, has been mentioned to me by Mr. Walker, Poitlethen, in Kincardine- shire. t Encyclopsedia of Rural Sports, by Delabcre P. Blaine, Esq., p. 412.