February, L920] GENETICS 35 



and personal traits. Sixty-seven personal traits are noted, ranging from chivalry and cour- 

 age, to scholarship and Belf-control. These arc traced as they are variously segregated and 

 recombined in the ancestry and finallj' appear in the propositus.— //. //. Laughliu. 



247. Davis, Robert L. Plant breeder's envelope. Jour. Heredity 10: 16S-1C9. Fig. G. 

 Apr., 1919.— See Hot. Absts. 3, Entry 992. 



24S. Downing, Elliot Rowland. The third and fourth generation; an introduction to 

 heredity. 164 p. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. 1918. — One of a series of "Con- 

 structive studies" in religious education, published under auspices of Divinity School of Uni- 

 versity of Chicago. A brief popular treatment of eugenics "for young people." Contains a 

 few plates and figures and numerous pedigree charts. Adapted to class use by questions at 

 end of each chapter. Chapter 1, introduction. 2, Some famous pedigrees. 3, Sexual repro- 

 duction (mandrake and frog). 4, Mendel's results and explanation of same, presence and 

 absence hypothesis, partial dominance. 5, Examples of man's achievements: origin of domes- 

 tic varieties, emphasizing mutation; Jones' "yellows"-resistant cabbage; work of de Vries, 

 Burbank, Johannsen, Nilsson; Aaronsohn's drought-resistant wheat; selection and hybrid- 

 ization in wheat and corn; egg-laying in chickens. 6, Physical basis of heredity, sex chromo- 

 somes. 7, Some apparent exceptions to Mendel's law; Bateson's purple sweet peas, and other 

 examples of reversion; factor hypothesis, and coat color in rabbits; pheno type-genotype 

 conception, and multi-hybrid ratios; Nilsson-Ehle's 15 : 1 and 63 : 1; negro-white crosses; 

 sex-linked characters in Drosophila and man. 8, Inheritance of acquired characters: fallacy 

 of certain supposed examples; Weismannism; transplantation of ovaries; importance of dis- 

 tinguishing effects of environment and heredity in man; Tower's potato beetles; Stockard's 

 alcoholized guinea-pigs; transmission of venereal diseases. 9, Inheritance of human charac- 

 ters, mostly pedigrees of feeblemindedness and of royal families. 10, "The practical problem 

 of human heredity:" ". . . young people . . . have a right to a frank, yet reverent, pre- 

 sentation of reproduction and heredity;" summarizes earlier chapters of book as far as they 

 bear on eugenics; points out the danger of "survival of unfit" in America, and recommends 

 certain general social, economic, and legal readjustments to meet this danger. [See Bot. 

 Absts. 3, Entry 245.]— Merle C. Coulter. 



249. Duerden, J. E. Breeding experiments with North African and South African 

 ostriches. IV. Increasing the number of plumes: Degeneration and restoration. Union of 

 South Africa Dept. Agric. Bull. 7. 39 p., 12 fig. 1918.— See Bot. Absts. 3, Entry 2116. 



250. Emoto, Y. On the relative efficiencies of cross and self fertilization in some plants. 

 [Title in English, text in Japanese.] Bot. Mag. Tokyo 32: 153-186. 2 fig. June, 1918.— See 

 Bot. Absts. 2, Entry 11. 



251. Frets, G. P. (1) On Mendelian segregation with the heredity of headform in man. 

 Proc. Kon. Akad. Wet. Amsterdam. 20 (1917): 435-448. 7 fig. (2) Complicated Mendelian 

 segregation in the heredity of headform in man. Ibid. 20: (1917): 865-874. 1918. — The signif- 

 icance of the shape of the head as an anthropological characteristic was brought to light by 

 the investigations of A. Retzius. He discriminates the brachycephalic or short and round, 

 and the dolichocephalic or long and oval skull type. The inheritance of head form has not 

 yet been investigated methodically. E. Fischer concludes, from his hybrid material that 

 headform is most probably hereditary according to the rules of Mendel. — These first prelim- 

 inary communications relate to the results of a thousand measurements. As completely as 

 possible all members of the families were measured. Extensive tables will be published 

 later. The material consists of families of from one to three generations (i.e., four grand- 

 parents, parents, and children). It is a question whether the Mendelian analysis of factors 

 of heredity of shape of head can restrict itself to tracing heredity of the index. In this case, 

 we should have to do with one pair of units, or with several (Nilsson-Ehle). If length and 

 width Mendelize separately, we have to do either with two pairs of units or with two pro- 

 gressions. Both possibilities are examined. In favor of segregation plead those cases where, 



