12 



C. B. DAVENPORT 



TABLE 8 

 Frequency of specified characters in the ojfspring in the given matings 



The male offspring, although all remarkably alike, are like the 

 males of neither of the races involved: for they have the white 

 lacing that is characteristic of the Dark Brahma and the red 

 upper wing coverts that are characteristic of the Brown Leghorn — 

 thus their characteristics are clearl}'^ derived from the germ-plasm 

 of both parents. Can the same be said of the characteristics of 

 the female offspring? So far as concerns those characters that 

 are not sexually dimorphic such inheritance from both parental 

 germ-plasms is clear, for the pullets of the reciprocal crosses are 

 alike in having pea combs instead of single combs and in having 

 slight in place of heavy booting. Ordinary somatic characters 

 follow the ordinary laws of equivalence in reciprocal crosses. 



Even in the sexually dimorphic character of pattern of the 

 feathers of the breast, back, and upper wing there is only a slight 

 difference in the reciprocal crosses. Thus, when the Dark Brahma 

 is taken as father, while the pullets (fig. 8) all have the gray back- 

 ground on the feather correlated with the white hackle, the broad 

 concentric loops, on the contrary, shown in fig. 4, are replaced 

 by finer loops which are more or less discontinuous and show 

 a transition to the condition of stippling characteristic of the 

 Brown Leghorn hen. The pattern is quite the same in the pullets 

 (fig. 7) derived from the Brown Leghorn father. The pattern 

 is truly intermediate. Also, in both crosses, the amount of red 

 on the wing in the pullets is intermediate (figs. 7, 8) although 



