132 On, the Inheritance of Colour in Pigeons 



In the present paper the colours considered are black, dun, blue and 

 silver, their relations to each other, and the behaviour of the two latter 

 when mated to white. The experiments on these colours are still in 

 full progress, so that this report must be considered merely as a 

 preliminary account of them. Enough has, however, been done to 

 demonstrate a sex-limited inheritance in silver. The same may possibly 

 be shown in dun also on further experiment'. It is found that, whereas 

 a black </" mated to a silver $ gives all the offspring black, yet a silver j/" 

 mated to a black ^ gives black (/s and dun ^s. This result is similar 

 to that obtained from the reciprocal matings of Cinnamon and Green 

 Canaries. Farther evidence on the sex-limited inheritance of silver in 

 pigeons is obtained from the experiment, alluded to below, on the 

 matings of Silvers and Reds. 



The possibility of a sex-limited inheritance of white in pigeons was 

 suggested in my previous paper (p. 85) to account for the great excess 

 of whites produced from the matings of heterozygous reversionary blues 

 with whites in Exps. 16 — 23. This was particularly marked when the 

 white was </, and Prof. Whitman's experiments with Doves were 

 instanced in support of this proposition. The present series of crosses 

 gives very little further evidence as regards white, but reference to 

 experiment 58 of the present report would suggest that it is not 

 sex-limited in these pigeons. 



I have recently made a series of experiments on the crossing of 

 coloured and white doves. These matings confirm Prof. Whitman's 

 results, and an account of them is included in the present report. 

 Specimens of the Turtle Dove {T. turtur) and the Barbary Cage Dove 

 {T. risorius var. domesticiis) have been mated respectively with the 

 Java Dove, a white variety of the latter. These crosses show con- 

 clusively that the phenomenon of sex-limited inheritance of white does 

 occur in these species. 



Brief Statement of Results. 



In the present report three sets of experiments with pigeons are 

 included. 



1. Matings of blue and silver Rock Doves to each other and to luhites. 

 The whites used being Fantails and whites extracted from the Barb- 

 Fantail crosses already described. 



' The evidence from this year's matings, as far as it goes, supports the suggestion that 

 the inheritance of dun is also sex-limited. {See p. 156.) 



