{"id":441,"date":"2013-01-18T16:01:56","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T16:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/towardsdolly.wordpress.com\/?p=441"},"modified":"2013-01-18T16:01:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T16:01:56","slug":"star-of-the-stripes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/2013\/01\/18\/star-of-the-stripes\/","title":{"rendered":"Star of the Stripes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/files\/2013\/01\/j-c-ewart-with-burchells-zebra-c-1900.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-442\" alt=\"J.C Ewart with Burchell's zebra c.1900\" src=\"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/files\/2013\/01\/j-c-ewart-with-burchells-zebra-c-1900.jpg?w=584\" width=\"584\" height=\"433\" srcset=\"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/files\/2013\/01\/j-c-ewart-with-burchells-zebra-c-1900.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/files\/2013\/01\/j-c-ewart-with-burchells-zebra-c-1900-300x222.jpg 300w, https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/files\/2013\/01\/j-c-ewart-with-burchells-zebra-c-1900-624x463.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a>I have\u00a0recently begun\u00a0cataloguing the papers of James Cossar Ewart (1851-1933), who was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1882 to 1927. Cossar Ewart was a pioneering zoologist and animal breeder who is probably best remembered for his work on cross-breeding zebras and horses. This work, written up as <em>The Penycuik Experiments<\/em> (1899), was instrumental in disproving the long-held theory of telegony, which held that the a sire could &#8216;infect&#8217; the dam he serves by influencing the genetic inheritance of the offspring of subsequent sires.<\/p>\n<p>To disprove this, Ewart cross-bred a zebra stallion with various mares of different breeds, which produced foals with zebra-like stripes. The mares were afterwards mated with horses of their own breeds, but these offspring never showed any evidence of having been affected by the previous zebra sire.<\/p>\n<p>Cossar Ewart was also the driving force behind the establishment of a lectureship in genetics (1911) at the University, the first in the UK. He is pictured\u00a0above with one of his prized zebras\u00a0&#8211; an image which\u00a0has already proved to be one of our most popular, as seen <a title=\"Cover\u00a0star!\" href=\"http:\/\/towardsdolly.wordpress.com\/2012\/05\/08\/cover-star\/\">here<\/a>!\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More about Cossar Ewart and his zebras to follow&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have\u00a0recently begun\u00a0cataloguing the papers of James Cossar Ewart (1851-1933), who was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1882 to 1927. Cossar Ewart was a pioneering zoologist and animal breeder who is probably best remembered for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/2013\/01\/18\/star-of-the-stripes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p40Aqf-77","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/towardsdolly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}