42 TABOO AND GENETICS 



or (c) potentially either male or female. Clearly, 

 the above explanation assumes a certain germinal 

 specialization of the female to reproduction, in 

 addition to the body specialization for the 

 intra-parental environment (in mammals). 



A tremendous amount of laboratory experi- 

 mentation upon animals has been done in late 

 years to determine the nature of sex. For 

 example, Goodale (i6) castrated a brown leghorn 

 cockerel twenty-three days old and dropped 

 pieces of the ovary of a female bird of the same 

 brood and strain into the abdominal cavity. 

 These adhered and built up circulatory sj^stems, 

 as an autopsy later showed. This cockerel, 

 whose male sex glands had been exchanged for 

 female ones, developed the female body, and 

 colouration so completely that expert breeders 

 of the strain pronounced it a female. He found 

 that simply removing the female sex glands 

 invariably led to the development of spurs and 

 male plumage. But simple removal of the male 

 sex glands did not alter plumage. To make 

 sure, he replaced the male sex glands with 

 female, and found that the former male developed 

 female plumage. 



This obviously signifies that in birds the 

 female is an inhibited male. (4, p. 49.) Either 

 sex when castrated has male feathers — the male 

 has them either with or without testes, unless 

 they are inhibited by the presence of (trans- 



