To designate this
condition, Telegony is the word that was coined by Weismann in
his "Das Keimplasma," and he defines it as "Infection of the
Germ," and, at another time, as "Those doubtful instances in
which the offspring is said to resemble, not the father, but an
early mate of the mother,"--or, in other words, the alleged
influence of a previous sire on the progeny produced by a
subsequent one from the same mother. In a systematic discussion
of telegony before the Royal Medical Society, Edinburgh, on March
1, 1895, Brunton Blaikie, as a means of making the definition of
telegony plainer by practical example, prefaced his remarks by
citing the classic example which first drew the attention of the
modern scientific world to this phenomenon. The facts of this
case were communicated in a letter from the Earl of Morton to the
President of the Royal Society in 1821, and were as follows: In
the year 1816 Lord Morton put a male quagga to a young chestnut
mare of 7/8 Arabian blood, which had never before been bred from.
The result was a female hybrid which resembled both parents. He
now sold the mare to Sir Gore Ousley, who two years after she
bore the hybrid put her to a black Arabian horse.
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