COMBS OF FOWLS 189 



on the inspection of visible somatic characters, but it has 

 not resulted, and cannot result, in evolving a homogeneous 

 race of blue Andalusians. On the contrary, the race 

 maintained with steady persistency a heterogeneous 

 gametic constitution. It was not the biometrical treat- 

 ment of a few thousands of blue Andalusian hens which 

 advanced our knowledge of the matter, but that precise, 

 specific, individual gametic analysis that is the diagnostic 

 feature of Mendelian treatment which finally enabled 

 us within a couple of years to show that the blue Anda- 

 lusian was a heterozygote, and could be made at any 

 time by simply mating a black hen with a " splashed " 

 cock or vice versa. 



And the same considerations apply to the comb char- 

 acters of hens. We cannot by such somatic selection, 

 however long it may be continued, obtain a homogeneous 

 single comb in respect to any one of its characters, except 

 as the result of a happy and exceedingly rare accident. We 

 cannot, for instance, knoAv by mere inspection that an 

 individual hen which bears a single comb prolonged 

 backwards beyond its attachment to the head into a 

 large spur is not forming gametes which carry another 

 type or types of single comb. To endeavour to fix a race 

 of hens which shall be homogeneous in one particular 

 character by breeding from a bird chosen by mere exter- 

 nal inspection is waste of time and money. And to 

 endeavour to investigate the question of variation of 

 the characters of single combs by indiscriminately massing 

 together a hundred or a thousand, or even ten thousand 

 hens which have been bred upon this principle of selection, 

 and to obtain the arithmetic mean, the standard devia- 

 tion and the coefficient of variation of their combs, appears 

 to us to be of the nature of " love's labour lost." And 

 that which is true in this respect of the combs of hens 

 is true of all those multifarious questions of inheritance 

 and evolution Avhich relate to horticulture, to agriculture, 

 and to Man. To believe that an inherently black body is 

 white because it is externally painted that colour seems 

 to us to be the highroad of delusion, the " straight, 

 broad road " of biological science. And yet it is this 

 road which the Biometricians are traversing, notwith- 

 standing that nine years ago Professor Bateson called 



