Mabch 5, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



395 



Man" and "Investigations of Gas and Heat 

 Exchange in Fevers," both by A. Likhachev 

 and P. Avroroff. Finally, two articles by Dr. 

 Kartaschefsky reporting experiments with the 

 small Pashutin respiration apparatus have 

 been translated. They are entitled " The In- 

 fluence of a Lack of Oxygen on the Exchange 

 of Matter and the Heat Production in Ani- 

 mals " and " On the Influence of the Sur- 

 rounding Temperature upon Animals in a 

 Gas-Atmosphere poor in Oxygen." 



These articles were translated in part by 

 Mr. Alexander Kose, of Boston, Mr. Michel 

 Groosenberg and Miss Anna Monossowitch, 

 who is at present engaged in Russian trans- 

 lation at the Nutrition Laboratory. 



Thus it is hoped to keep American workers 

 in nutrition in more intimate contact with the 

 admirable Russian researches that have as yet 

 been practically inaccessible. Arrangements 

 have been made with Professor Likhachev 

 whereby all articles dealing with problems of 

 metabolism can be sent to this laboratory for 

 translation. Prom time to time the titles and 

 short abstracts of these articles will be pub- 

 lished in some scientific journal. 



Francis G. Benedict 

 Nutrition Laboeatoett, 

 Caenegie Institution of Washington, 

 Vila Steeet, Boston, Mass. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



A MENDELIAN VIEW OP SEX-HEREDITY 



Two important contributions have recently 

 been made to the discussion of sex-inherit- 

 ance. In each a somewhat different view is 

 presented, yet the two, I believe, are not irrec- 

 oncilable, and if coordinated, will give us a 

 truer conception of the whole matter than we 

 have had before. I refer, on the one hand, to 

 the recent vice-presidential address of Pro- 

 fessor Wilson,' andi on the other, to the com- 

 bined work of Bateson, Punnett, Doneaster, 

 Durham and Marryat, published in Report 

 rV. to the Evolution Committee of the Royal 

 Society. 



In 1903^ I advocated the view that sex is in- 



' Science, January 8, 1909. 



'Bulletin, Mus. Com. Zool., Vol. 40, p. 189. 



herited as a Mendelian character. The idea 

 was not original with me. The suggestion 

 came from the now famous Report I. of Bate- 

 son and Saunders. The fact has since come 

 to light through Mendel's posthumously pub- 

 lished letters'" that Mendel himself had been 

 impressed by the parallelism between the phe- 

 nomena of sex-inheritance and those of ordi- 

 nary Mendelian inheritance. Indeed, the 

 parallelism is so complete and striking that 

 we can scarcely question the existence of a 

 like basis' for the two sets of phenomena. 



Professor Wilson, to be sure, argues against 

 what he terms " Mendelian theories " of sex- 

 heredity and advances a somewhat different 

 theory of his own. In reality, however, his 

 theory, while an improvement upon its prede- 

 cessors, is no less Mendelian than they, but 

 rather more so, as I shall attempt to show. 



Great advance has been made since 1903 in 

 our knowledge of Mendelian inheritance in 

 general, as well as of sex-inheritance, and it 

 is noteworthy that in restating our knowledge 

 in the two fields similar changes must be made 

 in both. For example, we formerly said re- 

 garding crosses between rodents of different 

 colors that " gray is dominant over black " 

 and that " black is dominant over yellow," 

 meaning that the contrasted characteristics 

 were antagonistic and one excluded the other 

 in crosses. As- we now look at the matter, 

 gray is not antagonistic to black, but eon- 

 tains an additional element which is wanting 

 in black. The correctness of this view is 

 shown by the fact that black can be changed 

 to gray by a cross which introduces that addi- 

 tional element. A similar relation holds be- 

 tween black and yellow; black is yellow plus 

 something else, and this something else may 

 actually be added to yellow (by a cross with 

 brown, for example) converting it into black. 



Similarly as regards sex, in 1903 I expressed 

 the view that male and female are antagon- 

 istic members of a Mendelian pair, one ex- 

 cluding the other. Such a view is inadmis- 

 sible in the light of our present knowledge. 

 What we should say is that the female is the 

 male condition plus something else. Male- 



^ Abh. math.-phys. Klasse d. k. Sachs. Oesellseh. 

 d. Wiss., Bd. 29, p. 185, Leipzig, 1905. 



