Larsen: Breeding Wild Game 91 



Breeding Wild Game 



What he considers the largest plant in the world for breeding and shipping 

 live game is described by Paul Larsen in the December number of the Game 

 Breeder. This is the estate of F. Horacek at Martinitz, Bohemia. 



"The first day," says Mr. Larsen, "I visited the park for haired animals located 

 in some high wooded hills. There are about twenty-five acres divided into five 

 in closures. Three of these usually contain six thousand hares and altogether 

 twenty thousand are trapped in a season and brought to the inclosures. Mr. 

 Horacek owns for trapping the hares, nets which are about nine thousand yards 

 long, representing a value of over S8,000. During the season three thousand netters 

 are employed to trap game. The other two inclosures arc filled with deer and 

 boars. 



"The second day of my visit I enjoA^ed seeing the pheasantries and partridge 

 aviaries. The first named consist of fifty-four covered and three open pens 

 which will hold at one time about ten thousand pheasants. The second named 

 consist of two hundred and ninety-eight pens, and over sixty thousand partridges 

 pass through these inclosures during a season. 



"While abroad I thoroughly studied the methods of distinguishing the sexes 

 of partridges," the writer continues. "Most people believe that the reddish- 

 brown crescent on the breast of the bird is a distinguishing mark of the male, 

 but this certainly is not so. I observed that a large proportion of the hens have 

 this mark and even larger and more well defined. One day while handling about 

 two hundred birds, in order to investigate this subject, I ascertained that the 

 best way of determining the sexes is that the males have a red spot just back of 

 the eye which is especially prominent at the mating season. The general color 

 of the male, also, is brownish while that of the female is grayish. The feathers 

 of the first mentioned are marked lengthwise and crossed with brown stripes 

 while the feathers of the female are barred with ashy-gray and sometimes with 

 black stripes. The head of the male shows no pearl-like markings which can 

 be observed on the head of the female." 



On Marriage Certificates 



Editorially reviewing recent American legislation on the subject of health 

 certificates as a requirement for marriage, the Medical Record (New York, 

 December 6, 1913) remarks: 



"In many of these the provisions of the law have far outrun the results of 

 scientific investigation. It is in fact still an open question whether confirmed 

 criminals and feeble-minded persons are especially apt to propagate their own 

 kind unless they mate with persons who, like themselves, carry a neuropathic 

 strain. With few exceptions the impediments to marriage, imposed by the new 

 legislation, appear to disregard the unsettled state of eugenic science, and assume 

 that the theories advanced by this or that particular school have correctly solved 

 the principles underlying the inheritance of good or bad germ-plasm." 



Hereditary Chorea 



Hereditary chorea, usually known as Huntington's chorea, is described in the 

 Boston Medical and vSurgical Journal for Nov. 6, 1913, by Dr. William A. Boyd 

 of the Westport, Conn., Sanitarium. He reviews the history, from the discovery 

 in 1842, of this disease, which is one of the most clearly marked and indisputable 

 of the disease-factors of cacogenics, and manifests itself, in general, only in adult 

 life. The disease has in recent years been studied by a number of genetists, all 

 of whom have borne witness to its highly transmissible character; Dr. Boyd adds 

 a case from his own experience, and- gives an extended bibliography of the subject. 



