August 25, 1910] 



NATURE 



253 



support. The largest of them, the Marine Biological 

 Association's station at Plymouth, is faced with a serious 

 deficit, and is forced to contemplate the curtailment of its 

 operations. The amount of sympathy and support which 

 the cause of " pure " science can evoke in Great Britain 

 is, unfortunately, very small. We should therefore regret 

 very much to see another " station " started, especially as 

 the staff at Plymouth have carried out just such a faunistic 

 survey of the coast near Plymouth as Mr. Pace desiderates. 



Mr. Pace believes that the intrusion of the economic 

 motive " must arrest, if it does not entirely hinder, scien- 

 tific research." If the zoological schools of this country 

 would concentrate on supporting one station, economic 

 work might be dispensed with, and we might have a 

 purely scientific biological station like Wood's Hole in 

 America. But this goal is far off. Each new zoological 

 school seems to desire its own station, and since the 

 " stations " must look outside the ranks of professional 

 zoologists for support, this support must be attracted by 

 the promise either to devote part of the energies of the 

 staff to economic problems, as the council of the Plymouth 

 station have done, or to undertake the dissemination of 

 popular knowledge of natural history, as the council of 

 the Millport station has done. After all, the foundations 

 of our knowledge of natural history were laid by the 

 splendid amateurs of the last generation, of whom the 

 founder of the Millport station was one. A great service 

 to science would be accomplished if we could resuscitate 

 this race. 



We agree with Mr. Pace that it would be an admirable 

 thing if marine biological research in this country could 

 be organised ; but it seems to us that the first step in this 

 direction would be the whole-hearted support of the Marine 

 Biological Association, which was founded for this pur- 

 pose, and this association, if adequately financed, could 

 provide a steamer which would serve the purpose of 

 faunistic investigation better than the movable laboratory 

 which Mr. Pace desires. Mr. Pace's scheme is an 

 admirable one for starting investigation in a new country — 

 it was that adopted by Canada for seven years ; but in 

 Canada it has been given up, and a permanent station on 

 the model of Plymouth has been substituted for it. 



E. W. MacBride. 



IXHERITANCE IN THE DOMESTIC FOWL."^ 

 T X the conditions under which they work, students of 

 -'■ genetics enjoy exceptional advantages in America, 

 where the munificence of private benefactors or the enter- 

 prise of various States has already led to the creation of 

 several institutions specially endowed for this line of re- 

 search ; and from time to time the record of their work 

 may appear jn the form of a sumptuous publication issued 

 by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Dr. Daven- 

 port is already known for his investigations on heredity in 

 poultry, and the present volume forms a continuation of 

 the account of his researches to which a volume in the 

 same series was devoted in 1906. 



The memoir deals mainly with characters which, at any 

 rate in some cases, are remarkable for the considerable 

 grading that is found among the offspring of the various 

 crosses. To this category belong the feathering on the 

 shanks and the extra toe. both normally found in certain 

 breeds of fowl. It has been recognised for some years 

 that the inheritance of polydactylism in poultry often 

 exhibits irregularities as compared with that of other 

 characters where the mode of transmission is of a simple 

 Mendelian nature. There are cases where the polydactyl 

 condition may behave as a dominant to the normal in the 

 ordinary way, but there are also cases where a bird with 

 normal feet, bred from a polydactyl strain, may transmit 

 the polydactyl condition to some of its offspring, i.e. where 

 the individual does not exhibit the extra toe, though breed- 

 ing tests show that the factor or factors for it must be 

 carried by some of its germ-cells. The dominance of such 

 a character as exhibited by the zygote may range from 

 completeness down to nil.. Nevertheless, some of the F, 

 birds are without the extra toe, and are incapable of 

 transmitting it; in other words, some of the germ-cells of 



1 "Inheritance of Characterislics in Domestic Fowl." By C. E. 

 Davenrort. Publication No. 121. Pp. 100 ; 12 plates. (Washington: 

 Carnegie Institution, 190c) I 



NO. 2130, VOL. 84] 



the F, birds are completely free from the element, what- 

 ever it may be, to which the extra toe is due. 



Hitherto it has not been possible to express this case 

 more precisely, and though Davenport's results confirm 

 our previous knowledge, he has been unable to construct 

 a definite factorial scheme to cover the facts. He con- 

 cludes that in polydactylism, as also in other cases, such 

 as rumplessness and the feathered shank, dominance varies 

 quantitatively, and that the degree of dominance is in- 

 heritable ; but, of course, this does not help us in under- 

 standing what these varying degrees of dominance are due 

 to. It may be that further work will make this more 

 clear, or it may be that the heredity of these meristic 

 characters differs from that of other characters in some 

 way that has not yet been perceived. For the present, we 

 can only confess to ignorance. 



.\n account is given of crosses between either Houdan 

 or Polish and single combs, and an attempt is made to 

 explain the results on the supposition that two comb 

 factors are concerned. Here again the irregularities 

 between normal expectation and observation are attributed 

 to quantitative variation in the degree of dominance. 

 Experiments with fowls' combs have hitherto given such 

 well-defined results that it seems not impossible that the 

 complexities encountered by the author are due to the 

 fact that he is dealing with more than two comb factors 

 in this particular cross. The author's statement that many 

 forms of comb appear in the Fj generation is probably not 

 without significance. 



A chapter is devoted to the inheritance of the high and' 

 widely open type of nostril found in the low-combed 

 Polish and Houdan breeds. From an elaborate system of 

 grading his data, the author concludes that the widely 

 open condition is dominant to the more usual narrow form- 

 of nostril, and that the intermediate grades are the result 

 of imperfection of dominance, though here again no 

 suggestion is given of the cause of this imperfection. 

 There is little doubt that this character of wide nostril is 

 largely dependent upon the size of the comb, and we can- 

 not help feeling that the treatment of the question would' 

 have been more satisfactory had the nostril and comb 

 characters been worked out in relation to one another. 



The inheritance of crest Davenport considers a some- 

 what more complex case than it was originally thought to 

 be, and he suggests that its nature depends certainly upon 

 two, and possibly upon more than two, factors. 



A short chapter is devoted to the results of breeding from 

 a wingless cock. When crossed with normal birds the 

 offspring were all normal, and some of these bred together 

 again produced nothing but normals. Davenport suggests 

 that winglessness is dominant to the normal condition, that 

 the wingless cock was heterozygous, and that dominance 

 in subsequent generations was imperfect. It may be 

 pointed out that the facts accord equally well with the 

 view that the abnormality was a purely somatic one, and 

 was not reflected in the germ-cells of this wingless bird. 



A number of experiments were made on plumage colour, 

 largelv with the view of elucidating the nature of buff 

 and of black, and the author has seen his way to express 

 his results in simple terms. Perhaps one of the most 

 interesting results is the appearance of a definite propor- 

 tion of white birds in the F, generation from a cross 

 between black and buff Cochins. The author is, however, 

 less happy in his discussion of the inheritance of blue, and 

 his atternpt to make the colour-inhibiting factor of the 

 white Leghorn partly responsible has led to an account 

 that is inconsistent with itself. 



The memoir concludes with a general discussion on topics 

 connected with heredity. 



AGRICULTURE AND ALLIED SCIENCES.^ 



T^HE number of agricultural and horticultural publica- 

 ■'■ tions has reached somewhat alarming proportions- 

 during the last few years, but there is always room for 

 really good works; and in this category must be placeiT 

 the Journal of the South-eastern Agricultural College, Wye, 

 Kent, No. 18 of which is under notice. This publication 

 1 "The Journal of the Pouth-eastern Agricultural College, Wye, Ken;," 

 No. 16. Pp. 4<3. (London and Ashfotd : Headley Bros., 1909.) Price 

 6s.; Residents in Kent and Surrey, 35. 



