MENDEL1SM IN PHEASANTS. 



283 



were normal in size and healthy in appearance, and no tiace of 

 an ovary could be discovered. The dissection was witnessed 

 and examined by two people. During some twelve or thirteen 

 pheasant rearing-seasons within my own experience, from one to 

 two so-called "mules" appear in every thousand birds reared. 

 An old keeper in our employ makes the same statement from a 

 life experience. These " mules," on dissection, have generally 

 been females. The bird exhibited is only the second male mule 

 I have ever met with. 



In the 'Journal of Genetics,' vol. iii. p. 205, Mr. C. J. Bond 

 describes and illustrates an example of hemilateral development 

 of secondary sexual male character in a hermaphrodite P.formo- 

 sanus. He is inclined to attribute the peculiar divisions of male 

 and female pattern to male hormonic activity in an atrophied 

 female sex-gland, patches of male element in active growth in a 

 degenerating ovary ; but in the example before us the mosaic of 

 male and female colour and pattern is transversely segmental, also 



Text-figure 1 



Sexual organ of mosaic male common Pheasant, seven months old. 

 Length 4 inches, without reckoning the curve : testes 7/16 inch. 



dissection only revealed a male organ of healthy normal appear- 

 ance. A paragraph in a daily newspaper, July 1914, refers to 

 some abnormal pheasant skins on exhibition at the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, in which one specimen is noted of a male having 

 some feathers of female type. 



Male Common Pheasant. 



A mosaic of male and female jjlumage. 



Shot 17th January, 1914.— Moyles Court. 



First skinned, then dissected*. The plumage was compared 

 with a dark-necked common male and a common female P. col- 

 chicus, also shot in the woods. It was observed that pattern, 

 colour, and structure are linked. 



* Ernest Adlem, the keeper, witnessed the dissection, and a drawing to scale was 

 made of the male organ, a rule with sixteenth divisions being used for measurement. 

 No trace of a female organ was seen. 



