APPENDIX 



CONTAINING 



PAPERS ON ANIMAL ECONOMY 



I. ON THE COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF MALE AND FEMALE 

 PARENTS ON THEIR OFFSPRING. 



[Read before the ROYAL SOCIETY, June 22, 1809.] 



I HAVE been engaged, during many years, in experiments on fruit-trees, 

 of which the object has been to discover the best means of forming new 

 varieties, that may be found better calculated for the climate of Britain than 

 those at present cultivated. In this inquiry my efforts have been always 

 most successful, when I propagated from the males of one variety and the 

 females of another ; and I was enabled, by the same means, to ascertain 

 more accurately than had previously been done the comparative influence 

 of the male and female parent on the character of the offspring. The 

 analogy that subsists between plants and animals, in almost everything 

 which respects generation, induced me also to attend very minutely to 

 similar experiments in which I engaged on some species of animals ; and 

 as the repetition of such experiments would necessarily require a very 

 considerable space of time, and as the results seem to lead to conclusions 

 that may be of public utility, I have thought the following account suffi- 

 ciently interesting to induce me to address it to you. 



Linnseus conceived that the character of the male parent predominated 

 in the exterior parts both of plants and animals ; and the same opinions 

 have been generally entertained by more modern naturalists. But the 

 Swedish philosopher appears to have been misled by the striking pre- 

 dominance of the character of the male parent in male animals, and to 

 have drawn his conclusions somewhat too generally : for I have observed 

 that seedling plants, when propagated from male and female parents of 



