ON SOMATIC SEX-CHARACTERS 75 



not attain the size of those parts in the perfect male, 

 the spurs appear l)ut remain short and blunt, and 

 the hackle feathers of the neck and saddle instead 

 of being long and narrow are short and broadly 

 webbed. The capon will take to a clutch of chickens, 

 attend them in their search for food, and brood them 

 under his wings when they are tired.' 



It would naturally be expected, on the analogy 

 of the case of stags, that when a young cock was 

 completely castrated all the male secondary char- 

 acters would be suppressed, namely, the greater 

 size of the comb and wattles in comparison with the 

 hen, the long neck hackles, and saddle hackles, long 

 tail feathers, especially the sickle-feathers, and the 

 spurs. As a matter of fact, the castrated specimen 

 usually shows only the first of these effects to any 

 conspicuous degree. The comb and wattles of the 

 capon are similar to those of the hen, but he still has 

 the plumage and the spurs of the entire cock. Many 

 investigators have made experiments in relation to 

 this subject, and most of them have found that 

 complete castration is difficult, and that portions 

 of the testes left in the bird during the operation 

 become grafted in some other position either on the 

 parietal peritoneum, or on that covering the in- 

 testines, and produce spermatozoa, which of course 

 have no outlet. In such cases the secondary male 

 characters may be more or less completely de- 

 veloped. Thus Shattock and Seligmaim (IIMM) 

 state that ligature of the vas deferens made no 

 difference to the male characters, and that after 

 castration detached fragments were often left in 

 different positions as grafts, when the secondaiy 

 characters developed. In one particular case only a 



