Professor James Cossar Ewart is best remembered for ‘The Penycuik Experiment’ which he carried out in his hometown of Penicuik. His advocacy for scientific exploration using animal breeding helped establish the UK’s first University Lectureship in Genetics at the University of Edinburgh in 1911.
In 1878, having studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he was appointed Chair of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen. Finding himself beside the North Sea, Ewart soon became fascinated with marine biology and established the first coastal experimention station in Britain.
Four years later he moved to the University of Edinburgh as Regius Professor of Natural History, a position he held for an astonishing 45 years. He began experimenting with ways to test theories of inherited characteristics, in other words, how physical aspects can be passed down through generations.
Specifically, Ewart wanted to disprove the ancient Greek theory known as ‘Telegony’ which was still believed by some to be based on truth. The theory stated that a female continued to give birth to offspring that had characteristics inherited from her first mate, regardless of the fact that she may have subsequently mated with different males.
To do this, Ewart mated a male Burchell’s zebra with a horse and proved that the horse did not go on producing striped foals once it was mated with another horse. He later experimented on sheep and travelled to New Zealand and Australia to advise breeders on improving fleeces through cross-breeding their flocks.
Back in Scotland, he explored the evolution of scaled reptiles into feathered birds by studying penguins in the recently established Edinburgh Zoo. Having lived in Penicuik his entire life, he died there on New Year’s Eve, 1933.
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