"But it is not only in relation to color that we find telegony to have been noticed in the human subject. Dr. Middleton Michel gives a most interesting case in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for 1868: 'A black woman, mother of several negro children, none of whom were deformed in any particular, had illicit intercourse with a white man, by whom she became pregnant. During gestation she manifested great uneasiness of mind, lest the birth of a mulatto offspring should disclose her conduct.... It so happened that her negro husband possessed a sixth digit on each hand, but there was no peculiarity of any kind in the white man, yet when the mulatto child was born it actually presented the deformity of a supernumerary finger.' Taruffi, the celebrated Italian teratologist, in speaking of the subject, says: 'Our knowledge of this strange fact is by no means recent for Fienus, in 1608, said that most of the children born in adultery have a greater resemblance to the legal than to the real father'--an observation that was confirmed by the philosopher Vanini and by the naturalist Ambrosini. From these observations comes the proverb: 'Filium ex adultera excusare matrem a culpa.' Osiander has noted telegony in relation to moral qualities of children by a second marriage. Harvey said that it has long been known that the children by a second husband resemble the first husband in features mind, and disposition. He then gave a case in which this resemblance was very well marked. Orton, Burdach (Traite de Physiologie), and Dr. William Sedgwick have all remarked on this physical resemblance; and Dr. Metcalfe, in a dissertation delivered before this society in 1855, observed that in the cases of widows remarrying the children of the second marriage frequently resemble the first husband. "An observation probably having some bearing on this subject was made by Count de Stuzeleci (Harvey, loc. cit.). He noticed that when an aboriginal female had had a child by a European, she lost the power of conception by a male of her own race, but could produce children by a white man. He believed this to be the case with many aboriginal races; but it has been disproved, or at all events proved to be by no means a universal law, in every case except that of the aborigines of Australia and New Zealand. Dr. William Sedgwick thought it probable that the unfruitfulness of prostitutes might in some degree be due to the same cause as that of the Australian aborigines who have had children by white men. "It would seem as though the Israelites had had some knowledge of telegony, for in Deuteronomy we find that when a man died leaving no issue, his wife was commanded to marry her husband's brother, in order that he might 'raise up seed to his brother.'" We must omit the thorough inquiry into this subject that is offered by Mr. Blaikie. The explanations put forward have always been on one of three main lines:--