ACITHOns' ABSTRACT OF THIS PAPER ISSUED HY 

 THB BIBLIOGRAPHIC SERVICK, DECEMBKU IS 



SEX STUDIES 



HE CORPUS LUTEUM IN THE OVARY OF THE 

 DOMESTIC FOWLi ' 



RAYMOND PEARL AND ALICE M. BORING 



SIX TEXT FIGURES AND NINE PLATES 



I. INTRODUCTION 



The corpus luteum is one of the clearly recognized sources of an 

 internal secretion in the mammal. Various functions have 

 been ascribed to it. Its function in connection with secondary 

 sex characters has been discussed by Pearl and Surface ('15), 

 with one piece of clear cut evidence. The case was that of a 

 cow which developed cystic ovaries and took on male secondary 

 sex characters. The ovaries were compared histologically with 

 those of a normal cow and the two were found to resemble each 

 other in all respects except that the cystic ovaries had no 

 corpora lutea. The interstitial cells were the same in both so 

 that the difference in secondary sex characters could not be at- 

 tributed to them. The implication of the facts is that the cor- 

 pus luteum has an inhibitory influence in the female which 

 prevents maleness from developing and that when no corpus 

 luteum is formed, male characters appear. 



The chief difficulty with such a view has been that its appli- 

 cation is very limited, as the corpus luteum has been supposed 

 to be a structure occurring only among mammals. The sec- 

 ondary sex characters of birds are particularly pronounced and 

 the results of ovariotomy experiments, such as those of Goodale, 

 ('16) show the possibility of changing these characters experi- 

 mentally. Also the many cases of hermaphrodite birds (to be 



' Papers from the Biological Laboratory of the Maine Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, No. 115. 



1 



THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ANATOMY, VOL. 23, NO. 1 

 JANUARY, 1918 



