Breeders of dogs are (or were) even more thoroughly convinced of the fact of telegony than breeders of horses. But Sir Everett Millais, who devoted thirty years to the breeding of dogs and experiments on this question, states that he has never seen a case of telegony. And recent experiments of the most definite kind support his conclusion. Dalmatians, deerhounds, and retrievers have been used in these experiments. Many such experiments in telegony are accidentally or unwittingly made every year with dogs. An undesired crossing of two breeds takes place, but when subsequent pure breeding takes place no "telegonic" infection of the mother is observed. Cases believed to be due to telegony have on examination proved to be due to the carelessness of stablemen, who have allowed a dog to escape temporarily from the kennels or to enter them uninvited. The men have attributed the mongrels so begotten to telegony in order to conceal their negligence.
Another curious case was that of a rickety spaniel puppy, which was exhibited a few years ago at the Zoological Society and believed by the exhibitor to owe its bandy legs to "telegonic" infection of the mother by a dachshund, with which she was supposed to have mated a year or more before being put to the father of the spaniel. Its true nature was at once recognized by the experts present, the bandy legs being those caused by "rickets," and not like those of the well-known dachshund breed.
It appears that the explanations widely prevalent of many apparently strange things discussed in the preceding chapters, such as live toads buried in rocks, the water-finder's mystic rod, the coincidence of birth-marks and maternal impressions, and the inheritance of offspring from a previous mate of their dam, are hasty and unverified suppositions, which have never been properly tested, and that when the wonder-provoking statements made and the actual facts in question are properly and sufficiently examined, according to the rules of evidence and common sense, it is discovered that the assumption of occult or exceptional causes in explanation of such strange things are not justified, but that these strange things owe their strangeness in large part to the incorrect and incomplete observation of those who report them, and to that love of marvel and mystery which, like hope, springs eternal in the human breast.