EXPERIMENTS WITH ALCOHOL 157 



with eggs from other experiments, being kept separate by wire 

 partitions at the time of hatching for pedigree purposes only; 

 the hatched and properly tagged chicks were indiscriminately 

 mixed with normal chicks from other experiments in the brooders 

 and later in the adult houses. At no stage in the life history 

 have the offspring of alcohohc matings been kept by themselves. 

 By this indiscriminate mixing with the general flock any possi- 

 bility of conscious or unconscious differential treatment of these 

 birds has been avoided. Any differences which appear between 

 various groups of these Fi progeny individuals must be attrib- 

 uted to differences antecedent in point of time to their own 

 contact with the environment. 



The general plan of the matings in 1915 was to breed a treated 

 male of each of the three classes, ethyl, methyl and ether with 

 (a) untreated control females, and (b) with treated females of 

 his own class (i.e., ethyl d^ X ethyl 9 , methyl d^ X methyl 9 , 

 ether cf X ether 9 ) • In addition to these matings an un- 

 treated control male was mated with (a) untreated control 

 females, (b) ethyl females, (c) methyl females, and (d) ether 

 females. A general conspectus of all the 1915 matings is ex- 

 hibited as table 5. 



All of the matings were of the type Black Hamburg cf X 

 Barred Plymouth Rock 9 . 



Each male might have been mated with more females than 

 he was. The matings were purposely kept small in number 

 in order that there could be no possible criticism that the males 

 were overworked in the breeding pens and in consequence pro- 

 duced weak or degenerate offspring. 



There was nothing in the sexual behavior of the alcoholized 

 males noticeably different from that of normal males. All three 

 of the treated males used proved to be very vigorous breed- 

 ers. A characteristic, but, not especially significant, bit of be- 

 havior was noted in the fact that nearly always the first act 

 of a male bird upon being released from an alcohohc inhalation 

 treatment in the tank was to copulate with one of the females 

 in the pen. It is not entirely certain whether this is to be re- 

 garded as an expression of an increase in the libido sexualis 



