FERTILISATION 209 



the germ-cells of animals by giving alcohol by inhalation to the 

 parents. The young produced were often degenerate, paralytic or 

 deformed, especially the males, and the descendants of these offspring 

 are said to have been often worse than the first generation. Similar 

 experiments by Cole and Bachhuber, 1 in which lead was administered 

 to male rabbits and fowls, are said to have resulted in a lowering of 

 vitality and a decrease in size on the part of the young. Fraenkel 2 

 states that the young of rabbits whose ovaries were subjected to 

 X-rays were stunted. 



A r arious experiments have been carried out in which ova or 

 ovaries obtained from one animal have been transplanted into 

 another. Thus, Heape 3 successfully inserted the segmenting ova of 

 an Angora rabbit into the Fallopian tube of a Belgian hare, but 

 though the young developed in the uterus of the foster-mother, 

 there was no evidence that the latter influenced the characters of the 

 offspring. Guthrie, 4 in experiments in transplanting the ovaries of 

 fowls of one variety into those of another, claimed to have proved 

 that the ova produced were influenced by the soma of the foster- 

 parents, since (for example) a black-plumaged hen supplied by 

 transplantation with an ovary from a white hen, when mated to a 

 white cock gave about equal numbers of white and spotted chickens. 

 Guthrie supposed that the black spots on the plumage of some of the 

 chicks showed that the black foster-mother had infected the engrafted 

 " white " eggs. Davenport, 5 who repeated the experiments, came to 

 the conclusion that the transplanted ovaries never really became 

 functional, and that the eggs produced were derived from regenerated 

 ovaries that had not been completely extirpated. 



On the other hand, Castle and Philips, 6 who performed similar 

 experiments with guinea-pigs, state that the transplanted ovaries 

 yielded eggs which were afterwards fertilised, arid that the offspring 

 were unaffected by the soma of the foster-mothers. Thus, a white 

 guinea-pig into which an ovary from a black one was grafted, 

 when mated to a white male, gave .birth to litters of black 

 young ones. 



1 Cole and Bachhuber, "The Effect of Lead on the Male Germ-Cells of the 

 Male Rabbit and Fowl, etc.," Proc. Exp. Biol. and Med., vol. xii., 1914. 



2 Fraenkel, " Rontgenstrahlenversuche am tierischen Ovarien usw.," Arch. 

 f. Mikr. Anat., vol. Ixxx., 1912. 



3 Heape, "On the Transplantation and Growth of Mammalian Ova 

 within a Uterine Foster-Mother," Roy. Soc. Proc., vol. xlviii., 1890, and 

 vol. Ixi., 1897. 



4 Guthrie, "Further Results of Transplantation of Ovaries in Chickens," 

 Jour, of Exp. Zool., vol. v., 1908. 



5 Davenport, " The Transplantation of Ovaries in Chickens," Jour, of Morph., 

 vol. xxii., 1911. 



6 Castle and Philips, On Germinal Transplantation in Vertebrates, Carnegie 

 Institute (Washington) Publication, No. 144, 1911. 



