WCP5463

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

March 7th. 1899

Prof. J. C. Ewart.¹

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your "Penycuik Experiments" which I have read with great interest, and am very glad to find you are taking up such subjects. I have only two remarks to make in the way of criticism.

1. I do not think you lay stress enough (in your suggestions for Experimenters in [the] Appendix) ^{on the importance} of breeding, for Telegony² tests, from pairs of the same colour as well as [the] same breed. Any differences in the cross are known to bring out ancestral characters. Hence difference of colour alone may bring out stripes in horses. Also, I think it a pity that you have given so long a list of suggested experiments, because the greater the variety of single experiments the less their cumulative effect. I should say that experiments with one well selected breed, such as your Rum³ ponies, or any breed of uniform colour, repeated [2] say with six pairs, would be more conclusive than⁴ two or three times that number of experiments with quite different breeds or species. You want first, a careful examination, with photographs, of the percentage of striped foals that appear in the normal breed, both in their own home or elsewhere. That alone will be more difficult⁵ to get the more you multiply the breeds experimented with ^{and without it experiments are almost useless.} Then, I think each mare tested should be crossed, first with the zebra then with a horse of her own breed, — then with zebra again, then horse, and so on alternately 4 or 5 times. And this, done with 5 or 6 distinct mares (in separate places) would settle the question of the fact of any change in characters to the to the strange ^antecedent haybrid [sic] percentage.

2. But that would not prove the cause of the fact. It might be either "infection" or "prenatal impression". You put this last [3] aside as being too improbable. But it is solely a question of evidence, and a case has come to my knowledge which, to my mind, is conclusive.

About six years ago D[octo]^r. Geikie DD. ^{of Bournemouth,} a cousin of the geologists^{6 7}, brought me a photograph given him by an old friend of his — D^r. Richard Budd, M.D. of Barnstaple. It was so extraordinary that I wrote to D^r. Budd for confirmation & details, which he kindly gave me. The facts are these.

A gamekeeper had a gun-accident [sic] which led to the amputation of his right fore arm, at the North Devon Infirmary at Barnstaple of which D^r. Budd was Physician. Being anxious to get home he left before the wound was healed, taking instructions for the dressing, which he said his wife would do for him. His⁸ wife however was so nervous she could not do it, so a friend of hers — the recently married wife of a farmer near — offered to come and do it, which she did, till it was quite healed. About 6 months later this farmer's wife had a son born without any right fore arm, the stump exactly resembling that of [4] the gamekeeper. This of course intensely interested D^r. Budd, and some years afterwards, when the boy was apparently 7 or 8 years old, he ^himself took the photograph of the man and boy standing side by side, showing the closest resemblance between the two stumps.

What are the odds of this being chance? how [sic] many millions to one? In all England how many children are born with the right fore arm as if amputated just below the elbow, in a year, or in 50 years? Then you have the coincidence of locality, — at least 10,000 or 20,000 to one, and then the coincidence of it being the one woman ^{in the neighbourhood} who dressed the wound when pregnant, and not any other women whose children were born in the same year ^{in the same locality}. I sent a short paper with the Photo. to the B[ritish]. Ass[ociation] [for the Advancement of Science]. in 1893, & I will try to get back the Photo. I see, also, in the art[icle]. Deformities in Chamber's Encyclo[paedia]. it is stated that there is now much evidence for the influence of mental impressions of the mother on the offspring.

Believe me | Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]