364 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



breeders. It is possible to breed strains of hens in which high pro- 

 ductivity is a fixed characteristic. And when the poultryman breeds 

 along the right lines for increased egg production, he will at the same 

 time be producing a strain in which profit-making pullets will pre- 

 ponderate over the less profitable cockerels. The constitutionally more 

 fecund hens tend to produce a larger proportion of female offspring. 



J. A. T. 



Case of False Hermaphroditism. — H. E. Jordan (Anat. Record, 

 1918, 15, 27-35, 1 fig.). A case of masculine pseudohermaphroditism in 

 man, showing two abdominal testes and a bilateral pair of symmetrical 

 bodies like ovarian remnants, which turned out, however, to be lymph- 

 nodes. The interstitial cells of the testes were very few and small 

 — degenerate, in short. There was well-attested lack of sexual desire, 

 which is believed to stand in causal correlation with the activity of the 

 interstitial cells. The case was one of arrested male development — 

 atrophied testes, "rudimentary" penis, vestigial scrotum, and cryp- 

 torchism. But certain female secondary characters, e.g. well-developed 

 mammary glands, appeared. There were concomitant somatic abnorm- 

 alities (supernumerary digits and club-foot), besides left-handed n ess and 

 feeble-mindedness. J. A. T. 



Superfetation in Cow.— Mary T. Harman (Anat. Record, 1918, 

 14, 335-G). A case is described which may be interpreted as super- 

 fetation. It may, however, have been due to retarded development. 

 Whatever be the interpretation, the case adds another to the list of 

 mammals in which the uterus has been found to contain at the same time 

 embryos of widely different degrees of development. J. A. T. 



Grafts of Spleen on Allantois. — Vera Danchakoff (Amer. 

 Journ. Anat., 1918, 24, 127-89, 8 pis.). Mashed splenic tissue of fowl 

 grafted on to the allantois shows proliferation and differentiation in the 

 transplanted tissue, and induces the same in the allantois. Both sets 

 of cells react to the new conditions. The further existence of the adult 

 splenic tissue within the embryonic allantois results in a manifestation 

 of definite new potentialities in its surviving cells. In the vicinity of the 

 graft definite changes occur in the mesoderm, ectoderm, and endoderm 

 of the allantois. The mesenchyme is also involved in the general process 

 of stimulation, and shows granuloblastic differentiation as observed in 

 the mesenchyme of the body after grafts of splenic tissue. The above 

 is merely an indication of the lines of this important investigation. 



J. A. T. 



Notes on Fresh-water Fishes of Madras.— B. Sundara Raj 

 {Records Indian Museum, 1916, 12, 249-94, 5 pis.). This paper con- 

 tains many interesting notes on habits and life-histories. In Arius 

 falcariux the male carries the eight or so large eggs in his mouth for 

 many days until they hatch. The eggs of Haplochilus melanostigma 

 give off numerous short adhesive threads, by which they adhere to one 

 another and to foreign objects. From a certain area there arise very 



