50B THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



striae. So again Mr. Tegetmeier has recently shown * that 

 dragons not rarely produce silver-colored birds, which are 

 almost always hens; and he himself has bred ten such 

 females. It is on the other hand a very unusual event 

 when a silver male is produced; so that nothing would be 

 easier, if desired, than to make a breed of dragons with 

 blue males and silver females. This tendency is indeed so 

 strong that when Mr. Tegetmeier at last got a silver male 

 and matched liim with one cf the silver females he 

 expected to get a breed with both sexes thus colored ; he 

 was, however, disappointed, for the young male reverted to 

 the blue color of his grandfather, the youn^ female alone 

 being silver. No doubt with patience this tendency to 

 reversion in the males, reared from an occasional silver male 

 matched with a silver hen, might be eliminated, and then 

 both sexes would be colored alike; and this very process has 

 been followed with success by Mr. Esquilant in the case of 

 silver turbits. 



AVith fowls, variations of color, limited in their trans- 

 mission to the male sex, habitually occur. When this form 

 of inheritance prevails it might well happen that some of 

 the successive variations would be transferred to the female, 

 who would then slightly resemble the male, as actually 

 occurs in some breeds. Or again, the greater number, but 

 not all, of the successive steps might be transferred to both 

 sexes, and the female would then closely resemble the 

 male. There can hardly be a doubt that this is the cause 

 of the male pouter pigeon having a somewhat larger crop, 

 and of the male carrier pigeon having somewhat larger 

 wattles than their respective females ; for fanciers have 

 not selected one sex more than the other, and have had no 

 wish that these characters should be more strongly dis- 

 played in the male than in the female, yet this is the case 

 with both breeds. 



The same process would have to be followed and the 

 same difficulties encountered if it were desired to make a 

 breed with the females alone of some new color. 



Lastly, our fancier might wish to make a breed with the 

 two sexes differing from each other, and both from the 

 parent species. Here the difficulty would be extreme 

 unless the successive variations were from the first sexually 



*" The Field," Sept., 1872. 



