402 Maternal hiheritance and Mendelism 



while in other cases the whole of a batch will be found to consist of 

 a variant. 



2. Breeding experiments were made on the following egg-character- 

 istics : 



1. Greenish-shaded TheopMla colour (Fig. 10). 



2. Various green colours of Japanese green and some Chinese or 



European breeds (Fig. 6). 



3. The reddish brown variant derived from the normal-egged 



breed (Fig. 2). 



4. The blue variant from the normal breed (Fig. 5). 



5. The whitish grey variant from the normal breed (Fig. 4). 



6. The spindle-shaped variant from the normal breed (Fig. 13). 



7. The crimson variant from the normal breed (Figs. 7 and 8). 



8. Yellow, brownish-shaded yellow and white colours of newly 



laid eggs of the yellow and white cocoon breeds (Fig. 9). 



9. The brownish slate colour of Japanese normal breeds (Figs. 



1, 3, and 11). 



3. Some of these characteristics such as the normal brownish-slate, 

 reddish brown, blue, crimson, etc., arose from the special pigments 

 deposited in the serosa, which is produced by the conjugation of parental 

 nuclei, while others, such as whitish grey, spindle-shaped or the colour 

 of newly laid eggs are due to the shell or yolk which are of purely 

 maternal origin. The colour of greenish-shaded eggs, such as are found 

 in Japanese green breeds, and some Chinese or European breeds, is 

 mostly derived from the serosa, but it is more or less influenced by the 

 colour of the shell which is slightly tinted with green, or some other 

 colours. 



4. Those characteristics, in spite of the fact that their origin is 

 different, behave in the same way as regards inheritance, except the 

 crimson-coloured variant, which Mendelize in the normal order. The 

 order of inheritance is represented in the following schemes (page 403). 



The order of inheritance represented by the first scheme seems 

 to be non-Mendelian, but really it is Mendelian, the cause of the dis- 

 turbance of the proper order being due to the fact of maternal inherit- 

 ance, in which paternal characteristics remain dormant, even dominant 

 ones, in the egg stage. 



