A CASE OF TRUE HERMAPHRODITISM IN THE FOWL 187 



a few abortive attempts, learned to give the genuine crow of a 

 rooster. The pitch of the voice deepened, the change taking 

 place while the animal was still in the growing age (cf. Brandt, 

 '89). Its nightly crow was easily recognizable on account of 

 the deep voice, and by day the animal was often observed to 

 join the chorus of roosters in the barnyard, crowing excessively 

 like the hen-feathered but large-combed bird of , TichomirofT 

 (Brandt, '89) and specimen no. 1616 of Boring and Pearl ('18). 

 It was often seen scratching in the ground and calling the flock to 

 an alleged morsel of food, and though it was never seen to tread 

 hens it would strut and make advances to them after the manner 

 of cocks. Finally, it was fought by roosters, though itself quite 

 non-combative. 



The female behavior of the bird was as follows. For years 

 it would 'sing' like a laying hen. On two occasions it adopted 

 broods of incubator chicks, caring for them day and night and 

 clucking like a normal hen; but it was never seen sitting on a nest. 

 On one occasion, while the owner was stroking the 'pet' on its 

 ventral surface, it dropped an egg, which, though small and elon- 

 gate, showed the bird to be in possession of functional ovary and 

 oviduct. 



ANATOMY 



The external appearance (fig. 1) marked the bird as an hermaph- 

 rodite even to the casual observation of the layman, and this 

 conclusion was fully borne out on dissection. 



Male secondary sex characters consist of the upright character 

 of the comb, the enormous wattles, the spur on the right leg 

 (fig. 3), and the general carriage. Of these characters the un- 

 mistakably male wattles were regarded as decisive evidence of 

 male testicular hormones. 



Female external characters include the hen-feathering, infil- 

 tration of fat in the core of the comb (Smith, '11a), and a 

 spur rudiment on the left leg (fig. 3) . The comb is not unusually 

 large for a female comb and the fatty core is in correlation with 

 the generally fat condition of the animal. However, the hen- 

 feathering seemed to us conclusive evidence of the presence of 

 ovarian tissue. 



