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Telegony is a largely discredited theory of heredity holding that offspring can inherit the characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent; thus the child of a woman might partake of traits of a previous sexual partner. Experiments in the late 19th century on several species failed to provide evidence that offspring would inherit any character from their mother's previous mates.[1] It was superseded by the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance and the Boveri–Sutton chromosome theory. The Encyclopædia Britannica says telegony “must now be classed as superstitions."[2]