The idea of telegony, the
persistent influence of the first mating, may be invoked to explain this
discrepancy.
It is a pure myth. There is no good evidence[29] to support it, and
there is abundant evidence to contradict it. Telegony is still believed
by many animal breeders, but it has no place in science. In such a case
as the one quoted, the explanation is undoubtedly that the supposed
father is not the real one; and this explanation will dispose of all
other cases of telegony which can not be explained, as in most instances
they can be, by the mixed ancestry of the offspring and the innate
tendency of all living things to vary.
Now to sum up this long chapter. We started with a consideration of the
germ-plasm, the physical basis of life; pointing out that it is
continuous from generation to generation, and potentially immortal; that
it is carefully isolated and guarded in the body, so that it is not
likely to be injured by any ordinary means.
One of the logical results of this continuity of the germ-plasm is that
modifications of the body of the parent, or acquired characters, can
hardly be transferred to the germ-plasm and become a part of the
inheritance. Further the experimental evidence upholds this position,
and the inheritance of acquired body characters may be disregarded by
eugenics, which is therefore obliged to concern itself solely with the
material already in existence in the germ-plasm, except as that material
may be changed by variation which can neither be predicted nor
controlled.
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