James Cossar Ewart

Who was James Cossar Ewart?

James Cossar Ewart FRS was a Scottish zoologist. He was the son of John Ewart, a joiner, and Jean Cossar.

Ewart was born in Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland. He studied medicine from 1871 to 1874 at the University of Edinburgh, where he later became professor of Natural History from 1882 to 1927. After graduation, he became an anatomy demonstrator under William Turner and then held the position of Curator of the Zoological Museum at University College, London, where he was instrumental in establishing the first course of practical zoology. Here he collaborated with Ray Lankester, later director of the Natural History Museum. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1893, having jointly delivered their Croonian Lecture in 1881.

Among various other studies, he performed breeding experiments with horses and zebras, well before the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's works. Ewart crossed a male zebra with a female pony to show that the theory of telegony inherited from the Greeks was unsound. Telegony held that a female with a history of mating with multiple males would pass on genetic qualities of all previous partners to her offspring.