INHERITANCE OF FECUNDITY 233 



be used to start a pure race with such characters; hence, by the 

 elimination of one recessive character at a time, it is possible to 

 breed a race with special desired characters. 



Mendel's law, from its complexity and apparent confusion, will 

 not be of definite value to the average farm poultryman, yet it 

 is essential that the student have a clear understanding of the 

 subject in order that the behavior of characteristics in transmission 

 can be better appreciated. The principles which the law presents 

 have led to other important discoveries in the phenomena of 

 breeding. Some of Mendel's deductions in his original records are 

 discredited, owing to faulty analj'^sis, yet the results of his work 

 are more far-reaching than those attained by any other one man. 



Inheritance of Fecundity. — The transmission of the character 

 of producing a large quantity of eggs is one of the most important 

 problems before the poultry breeder, and some valuable work is 

 being done at agricultural experiment stations. 



The discussions pertaining to the inheritance of fecundity, or 

 egg production, as given here are based upon the work of Dr. 

 Raymond Pearl at the Maine Station. Quotations and facts are 

 taken from his papers on the subject; more especially, Maine 

 Bulletin 192. 



Among the leading biologists who are at present making a study 

 of breeding problems, two general views are held as to certain funda- 

 mental principles of heredity: (1) The " statistical " conception of 

 inheritance, and (2) the " genotype " conception of inheritance. 



"The statistical conception of inheritance is that point of view 

 which assumes, either by direct assertion or by implication, that 

 all variations are of equal significance, and consequently that all 

 may be treated statistically as one homogeneous mass, provided 

 that they conform to purely statistical laws of similarity." 



In studying heredity in the past, the mistake has been made 

 of noting a few individuals only, and these exceptional cases have 

 often led to conclusions which are worse than useless because of 

 their extreme range of variability. The advocates of this line of 

 study use this as an argument in favor of their point of view, and 

 make the statement that to study inheritance with any degree of 

 reliability the race as a whole must be considered, and not simply 

 the individuals which go to make it up. This method is compara- 

 tively new, especially when applied to poultry, and necessitates 

 a large mass of material representing sufficiently large numbers 

 of the breed under consideration to be actually representative. 



