EXPERIMENTS WITH ALCOHOL 159 



have been subjected to treatment with alcohol prior to the birth 

 of the offspring. This may well be the case even though alco- 

 hol is a poison which is comparatively rapidly eliminated from 

 the body and not accumulated, as are some metallic poisons. 

 In planning the present experiments it seemed highly desirable 

 to arrange matters in such way that a fairly wide range of varia- 

 tion in the duration of treatment prior to the hatching of the 

 offspring might be tested. That this point has appealed to other 

 workers in the same field' is shown by the following statement 

 in the first report on Stockard's alcohol experiments. Stockard 

 and Craig (37, p. 579) say: 



These experiments have suggested many questions still to be solved, 

 some of which are now being tested. The length of time necessary to 

 treat an animal before the resulting offspring is affected, whether this 

 time is equally long for both sexes, and what amount of individual 

 variation exists. 



This phase of the problem appears, however, not to have 

 been followed by Stockard, because one does not find in any of 

 the reports so far published on his work any definite numerical 

 statements regarding the duration of treatment for particular 

 matings before the birth of litters furnishing the data on which 

 the conclusions are based. 



In the present investigation the following reasoning has been 

 used in devising a numerical expression of the dosage, so far as 

 concerns the progeny. Two germ cells, a sperm and an ovum, 

 unite to form the zygote of each progeny individual. It is pro- 

 posed to designate as the 'total germ dosage index' the total 

 number of days during which the two gametes making the off- 

 spring zygote have been exposed to alcoholic influence while 

 sojourning in the body of the treated individuals. Such a 

 germ dosage index could, of course, be calculated for each indi- 

 vidual progeny chick born. It seems, however, more desirable 

 for present purposes to combine the figures for each mating, 

 and take the sum of the number of days from the beginning of 

 treatment of the male parent to the average date of hatching of 

 the progeny, plus the number of days from the beginning of 

 treatment of the female parent to the average date of hatching 



