n l Cases in Wild Types 49 



viz. short-styled plant, has been found in the case of the 

 Primrose, but no difficulty has been met with in raising 

 pure short-styled plants of Primula Sinensis. Besides this 

 example of Mendelian heredity manifested by a wild type 

 several of the examples of colour-inheritance in insects 

 relate to wild species. 



The circumstance that a character has not been pre- 

 viously bred pure does not, so far as is known, in any way 

 influence the mode of transmission of that character. For 

 instance, in the breeding of thoroughbred race-horses the 

 heredity of chestnut colour is that of an ordinary recessive*, 

 though the various colours, bay, brown, and chestnut have 

 been indiscriminately united together in the breed. No 

 difference is manifested between colour-inheritance of chest- 

 nuts which have had many chestnut ancestors in recent 

 generations, and those that have no chestnut progenitor in 

 the nearer degrees. The same is true for some of the 

 colour-cases seen in Lepidoptera which had not been the 

 subject of any previous selection. A remarkable example 

 of an obviously Mendelian inheritance in a wholly wild 

 form is that of the eye-colour of the Owl Athene 

 noctua\. 



Abundant examples of characters breeding true, though 

 newly-constituted, will be provided by those cases in which 

 a novelty of structure is brought suddenly into existence by 

 the occurrence of fresh combinations. In spite of their 

 recent origin, such new combinations have just the same 

 genetic properties and powers of transmission that are 

 possessed by the types of long-selected breeds. 



The suggestion hazarded by several writers that a dis- 

 tinction may be drawn between inter-racial and intra-racial 

 heredity has no foundation in fact. 



* Mr Hurst, who first elucidated the colour-inheritance of race-horses, 

 found that according to the records, chestnuts of various ancestries have 

 exclusively chestnut offspring with about i / o of exceptions, which are 

 very possibly due to error in the returns (see later). 



t Giglioli, Ibis, 1903, p. i. (See later, p. no.) 



B. H. 



