April 9, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



599 



survive adverse climatic or other conditions than 

 the females. 



It is generally thought the animals pair for 

 breeding purposes, but there is only one authentic 

 case of paired foxes Jointly engaged in feeding 

 and guarding the same litter of young. The dif- 

 ferent methods of branding have shown that foxes 

 often seen playing together in the spring are of 

 the same sex. There have been six cases of pro- 

 miscuous sexual intercourse witnessed. 



It is customary on St. George Island to have 

 250 pairs for breeding purposes annually. After 

 the breeding quota is secured all unbranded ani- 

 mals coming into the trap are killed and their 

 skins secured. The annual yield of skins varies 

 between 400 and 500. 



On St. Paul Island, where artificial feeding was 

 not attempted while a sufScient nucleus remained, 

 fox life is almost extinct. 



The Law of Recombination in Second Generation 



Hybrids: W. J. Spillman. 



It was pointed out that Mendel discovered three 

 important laws: namely, the law of dominance, 

 the law of separation and the law of recombina- 

 tion in the second generation. 



The first two laws have been adequately recog- 

 nized by most breeders, but the third law, which 

 is by far the most important from the standpoint 

 of breeding practise, has not been sufficiently 

 emphasized. The law of recombination may be 

 stated thus: In the second generation of a hybrid 

 there tends to appear every possible combination 

 of the original parent characters, the proportion 

 of the population constituted by each type being 

 2™/4«, in which m is the number of characters 

 with reference to which the type is heterozygote 

 and n the total number of characters involved in 

 the cross. 



It was pointed out that in practise the applica- 

 tion of this law is limited: 



1. By the number of individuals in the second 

 generation, which must be numerous enough to 

 permit the types to occur under the operation of 

 the laws of chance. 



2. The hybrid must be fertile. 



3. The presence of cryptomeric factors may give 

 unexpected results. 



4. Non-Mendelian characters would be independ- 

 ent of this law. 



5. In some crosses, such as produced Burbank's 

 Primus berry, irregularities in mitosis might 

 counteract the application of the law. 



The recent work of Professors Price and Drink- 



ard on tomato hybrids was given as an illustra- 

 tion of the recombinations of original parent char- 

 acters, each of the eight possible types being 

 shown. Illustrations were given of polled Here- 

 ford cattle produced by crosses between horned 

 Herefords and polled Durham cattle. The applica- 

 tion of the law of recombination at the Washing- 

 ton State Experiment Station has resulted in the 

 production of a winter club wheat which is now 

 rapidly replacing the spring clubs of that section. 

 These wheats yield considerably more than the 

 common wheats of the section and are wortii more 

 for flour-making purposes. 



The Lewis and Clark Cavern National Monument 



of Montana: V. K. Chesnut. 



The speaker exhibited lantern slides illustrating 

 the features of great geologic and historic interest. 

 The cavern which is remarkable on account of the 

 great diversity of form, and the snow-white beauty 

 of its drip rock, especially the helictitic forms, is 

 a steep comparatively unexplored abyss in an iso- 

 lated earth-block of Madison limestone very closely 

 bounded on two sides by faulting planes of pro- 

 found depth separating it from the Belt forma- 

 tion and the Three Forks shale. Including the 

 various halls, grottoes and chambers already dis- 

 covered it is about a mile in length, the largest 

 single room being about 125 feet in diameter with 

 supporting columns one to three feet thick run- 

 ning up to twenty feet in height. No excavation 

 has been made for vertebrate fossils. The lime- 

 stone itself is made up largely of blastoid stems. 



Of the existing living forms the only specimen 

 taken of unusual importance was a single pha- 

 langid spider, which has been credited recently 

 by Professor Nathan Banks as the type of a new 

 genus, Cypfobunus. The cavern, being 1,600 feet 

 above the Jeiferson River at Limespur, overlooks 

 75 miles or more of the Lewis and Clark route 

 along the Jefferson and Gallatin rivers and hence 

 it seemed appropriate that the cavern should be 

 conserved forever a monument to the memory of 

 these intrepid explorers. The proclamation cre- 

 ating it a national monument was made under the 

 act of June 8, 1906, entitled " An Act for the 

 ^'reservation of American Antiquities " and was 

 signed by President Roosevelt on May 11, 1908. 

 M. C. Maesh, 

 Recording Secretary 



THE ANTHROPOLOOICAl SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



The 430th regular meeting was held March 2, 

 1909. A preliminary presentation and explana- 



