MENDELIAN INHERITANCE IN POULTRY 



A Review 



Heredity in Poultry, by Reginald 

 Crundall Punnett, F. R. S., Pro- 

 fessor of Biology in the University 

 of Cambridge ; Fellow of Gonville 

 and Caius College, etc. Pp. 204; 12 

 pi ; price $2.00. Macmillan & Com- 

 pany, Ltd., London and New York. 

 1923. 



FOR over twenty years the domes- 

 tic fowl has been the subject of 

 experiments designed to discover, 

 among other things, the mode of in- 

 heritance of specific traits. It furnished 

 under the hands of Bateson the first 

 demonstration of Mendelian inherit- 

 ance in the animal kingdom, and has 

 since contributed information on many 

 of the more important general princi- 

 ples of genetics. Professor Punnett 

 was one of the first to recognize its 

 value as an experimental subject, and 

 from his early association with Bateson 

 to the present time, he has been inti- 

 mately connected with the growth of 

 knowledge about heredity in fowls. 

 There is no one better qualified than 

 he to write with interest and authority 

 on the subject. 



Li compiling this book the author, 

 as he tells us in the preface and the 

 text, had a number of objects. He 

 wished to summarize the progress of 

 investigation, to provide a guide to past 

 and possibly future work with poultry, 

 and to present the problems involved 

 in their relationship to the general 

 problems of genetics. His presentation 

 was influenced by an obvious desire to 

 make his book of value to those with 

 both a scientific and a practical interest 

 in poultry. He is particularly aware 

 of the need for impressing the prac- 

 tical man, who in the end supplies the 

 funds for investigation, with the value 

 of research into principles which may 

 lay the foundation for applications to 

 agriculture. The dominating, though 



unexpressed, object appears to be the 

 introduction of the reader to the prin- 

 ciples of Mendelism with illustrative 

 material drawn from poultry breeding. 

 These objects although difficult to 

 reconcile are in general fulfilled. The 

 greatest success is attained in the last 

 of the purposes mentioned and in the 

 opinion of the reviewer, the book will 

 prove of most value to persons inter- 

 ested in poultry who desire a simple 

 presentation of Mendelian inheritance. 

 Professor Punnett is a master of the 

 art of simple, concise statement as is 

 evidenced in his little volume on "Men- 

 delism" and his article "Mendelism" in 

 the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th Edi- 

 tion. He assumes but little familiarity 

 with general biology on the part of the 

 reader and proceeds from simple Men- 

 delism through the more complicated 

 subjects of reversion, multiple factor 

 inheritance, sexual characters and sex- 

 linked transmission to a short discus- 

 sion of linkage. His illustrations are 

 few, simple and well chosen, and they 

 are in general comprehensible to the 

 layman. The method of presenting 

 each subject is the excellent one of giv- 

 ing first a simple example of the facts 

 as known, then tracing the development 

 of the theoretical explanation and final- 

 ly, wherever possible, the indication of 

 the application of the principles to 

 poultry breeding. This method is well 

 exemplified in his two chapters on sex- 

 linked inheritance where after a theo- 

 retical explanation he shows the appli- 

 cation of Pearl's hypothesis of the in- 

 heritance of fecundity, and clearly out- 

 lines the methods to be used for dis- 

 tinguishing the sex of young chicks by 

 the use of sex-linked characters. He 

 makes no mention of the chromosome 

 theory of sex or linkage. In fact the 

 word chromosome is not to be found 

 in the index. This may be wise in 



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