TABOO AND GENETICS 43 



planted) ovaries. It will be remembered that 

 the sociological theory of sex held by Ward, 

 Mrs. Hartley and a host of others was founded 

 on the supposition that evolution or develop- 

 ment of a species is chiefly due to selection by 

 the females of the better males, a conclusion 

 based almost entirely on bird evidence. Ward 

 (17) states that " the change or progress, as it 

 may be called, has been wholly in the male, the 

 female remaining unchanged " ; also that " the 

 male side of nature shot up and blossomed out 

 in an unnatural, fantastic way ..." Speak- 

 ing of the highly-coloured males, especially 

 among birds, the same writer states that " the 

 normal colour (italics ours) is that of the young 

 and the female, and the colour of the male is 

 the result of his excessive variability." Goodale's 

 results completely refute this idea, and should 

 bury for ever the well-known sociological notion 

 of " male afflorescence." 



The general doctrine of a stable, " race-type " 

 female and a highly variable male has been 

 widely circulated. In tracing it back through 

 voluminous literature, it appears to have been 

 founded on an article published by W. I. Brooks 

 in the Popular Sciefice Monthly for June, 1879, 

 fourteen years before Weissmann's enunciation 

 of the theory of continuity of the germ-plasm. 

 Like Wallace, Brooks continued to study and 

 experiment till the last, and finally withdrew 



