January 6, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



19 



New York City has admittedly the largest 

 and most varied immigrant population of the 

 country. It has, however, many competent 

 foreign born physicians who care for their 

 own kind, besides many hospitals devoted to 

 the care of special foreign groups, like the 

 Italian, French and Lenox Hill (formerly the 

 German Hospitals, besides several others de- 

 voted to Yiddish patients. The Health Board 

 of the city is most active and efficient, together 

 with many other agencies, both public and 

 private, in raising the health standards among 

 the foreign born, and special health lectures 

 are given in different languages in the public 

 schools. The infant mortality of the entire 

 city has never been so low as in the past few 

 years and is a source of amazement to distin- 

 guished foreign members of the medical pro- 

 fession who come here. The comments of the 

 author upon the fraudulent medical cults with 

 which the country abounds are well made and 

 nowhere to be better ilustrated than in his own 

 quack-beridden state of California, but it is 

 unfair to shift any of the burden of this upon 

 an assumed negligence of the medical profes- 

 sion, which wages constant warfare against it 

 in its county, state, and national associations, 

 only to be defeated time and again by lay 

 legislators. There are too many other opera- 

 tive factors, notably the sensational press, the 

 general restlessness of the times, and indeed the 

 multiplicity of experimental medical tests them- 

 selves, which lead patients to compare experi- 

 ences with one another and seek all manner of 

 examinations whether they need them or not, 

 in order to get their money's worth out of what 

 the author characterizes as "our commercialized 

 system of private practice" — which remark 

 leads one to wonder whether he knows the 

 average income of the legitimate medical prac- 

 titioner. 



W. GiLMAN Thompson 

 142 E. 62HD St., 

 New Yoek City 



NOTE ON INHERITANCE IN SWINE 



The Berkshire pig is distinguished by the 

 following characters: (1) erect ears, (2) uni- 

 form black coat with the exception of "six 

 white points" which occur on the head, on each 



foot and on the tail, (3) a short "dished" nose, 

 and (4) a somewhat short and broad body. 

 The Large Black pig is distinguished by (1) 

 "flop" ears, (2) imiform black coat without 

 any white, (3) nose not "dished" and of 

 moderate length, and (4) a long body, some- 

 what narrower than that of the Berkshire. On 

 a farm near Oxford, pure-bred Large Black 

 boars have for some years been crossed with 

 pure-bred Berkshire sows. About a dozen lit- 

 ters have come under the observation of the 

 author of this note and the F^ generation has 

 invariably shown (1) erect ears, (2) uniform 

 black coat without any white, and (3 & 4) in- 

 termediate features as regards nose and shape 

 of body. Latterly, the reciprocal cross has 

 been made (Berkshire boar and Large Black 

 sow) and the 'Fi generation shows (1) erect 

 ears and (3 & 4) intermediate characters. But 

 as regards (2) there has appeared a gradation 

 from pure black to spotted pigs in which the 

 whole coat is fairly evenly divided into black 

 and white patches. At present the numbers are 

 small, but it would appear that the gradation 

 is not uniform between the pure black and the 

 spotted condition. There appear to be three 

 classes — pure black, black with the six Berk- 

 shire points and spotted. Further it is notice- 

 able that the true spotted pigs have hitherto 

 all been boars, though pure black boars have 

 also appeared. 



It may be suggested that erect ear is a 

 simple dominant. The coat color and other 

 features clearly require considerable analysis. 

 It may be that sex linkage is in some way 

 concerned in coloration. 



A. M. Caee- Saunders 

 Department of Comparative Anatomy, 

 Oxford 



ON SUMMARIES OF RECENT ADVANCES 

 IN PHYSICS 



The National Research Council has recently 

 issued two valuable pamphlets on the Quantum 

 theory (The Quantum Theory, E. P. Adams, 

 1920, No. 5; Atomic Structure, David L. Web- 

 ster, Leigh Page, 1921, No. 14). Similar con- 

 tributions on other live topics have come, from 

 time to time, from the Bureau of Standards. 

 I wish to express my personal appreciation of 



