August 31, 1906.] 



SCIENCE, 



275 



men could come for a time to carry on their 

 investigations, though how a professor could 

 leave his college duties for a ' term of two 

 years ' is not evident to me. 



But why give up the museum feature of the 

 Smithsonian? Certainly the United States 

 should not be without a national museum. 

 And if the museum were given up, what would 

 be done with the great collections already 

 there, and with the magnificent building now 

 under construction? Used simply as a re- 

 search laboratory this building would accom- 

 modate all the investigators in the entire 

 country. With such a start as has now been 

 made it would seem a great pity to discon- 

 tinue one of the most popular and instructive 

 attractions of the national capital, and to 

 distribute to other museums the exhibition and 

 working collections there brought together. 



In the first article noted it is stated that 

 ' In our universities the pedagogic element is 

 predominant to a degree quite unknown in 

 the German universities, and the body of in- 

 vestigators in them in any one field is too 

 small to create that which is the most stim- 

 ulating thing in all research — an atmosphere 

 of investigation.' It is certainly true that 

 most of us who are in university work are 

 heavily burdened with pedagogic duties; but 

 President Oilman once said, ' Sterile intel- 

 lects attribute their non-productiveness to 

 overwork, when a more acute diagnosis detects 

 a lack of will-power.' The statement in the 

 above quotation in regard to the absence of 

 the ' atmosphere of investigation ' in Amer- 

 ican universities seems to me to be rather 

 sweeping. Of course in a majority of our 

 colleges the number of men in each depart- 

 ment is so small that it is difficult to create 

 an atmosphere of investigation, but that there 

 is such an atmosphere in many of our best 

 institutions is an undoubted fact. 



In conclusion, I should say — let the Smith- 

 sonian continue to be the nucleus of a great 

 national institute of research, and, without 

 diminishing the importance of the museum 

 feature, let sufficient funds be made available 

 to carry on the additional work suggested in 

 the two articles quoted. Albert M. Reese. 



Syeacuse Univeesity. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES. 

 YELLOW MICE AND GAMETIC PURITY. 



The attention of readers of Science has 

 been directed by Professors Morgan (1905) 

 and Wilson (1906) to the curious method of 

 inheritance of yellow pigmentation among 

 mice, according to observations made by Oue- 

 not (1905). Cuenot found that yellow in 

 mice behaves as an ordinary Mendelian char- 

 acter dominant over all other types of pig- 

 mentation, but peculiar in that it can never 

 be obtained in a homozygous condition, yellow 

 mice forming regularly two sorts of gametes, 

 one sort being yellow, the other sort being in 

 some cases gray, in other cases black, and in 

 still others chocolate. 



These surprising observations carry with 

 them important theoretical conclusions. Al- 

 ready they have been interpreted in ways very 

 different by Cuenot and by Morgan. A fuller 

 knowledge of the facts may show which inter- 

 pretation is correct, or whether possibly neither 

 is adequate without some modification. It is 

 important first fully to establish the facts. 

 With this idea in mind (and, I confess, in- 

 clined to be sceptical because I had found 

 yellow so different in behavior in guinea-pigs 

 and rabbits from what Cuenot reports it to 

 be in mice) I have recently made a reexamina- 

 tion of some breeding records of fancy mice, 

 reared in 1900-1901, in connection with an 

 investigation of sex-determining factors in 

 mammals. The purely incidental records of 

 color-inheritance have not previously been 

 published, and I should hesitate to publish 

 them now in their fragmentary condition, did 

 they not serve to supplement and in the main 

 to corroborate the more extensive observations 

 of Cuenot. 



My original stock of mice, obtained from a 

 near-by breeder, consisted of the following 

 sorts: (1) black-white spotted mice, some 

 homozygous, some containing chocolate as a 

 recessive character; (2) chocolate (or choco- 

 late-white) mice, homozygous or else contain- 

 ing recessive total albinism; (3) yellow mice 

 (three in number) all of a clear reddish yellow 

 color above, but almost white below. Young 

 were obtained from one only of the three yel- 



