Mrs. Rose Haig Thomas, F.Z.S., read a paper dealing with a 

 breeding experiment with Pheasants undertaken to confirm a 

 previous one, in which it had been observed that a male Pheasant 

 had transmitted to his F 2 $ oflspring the female plumage of his 

 species. The following cross produced the same resvilt : — 



Phasiamis formosv.s $ X Phasianus versicolor J, 



F 1 ^ X Ph. versicolor c? . 



F2 $$29$ d 6- 



The five hens hatched in F 2 had grown up and were all 

 versicolor in pattern, colour, dimensions, and moral character. 

 One of these hens had been kept to breed with to test her purity, 

 and the skins of the other four were exhibited together with the 

 skins of a Ph. formosus 2 ^i^f^ ^ P^^- versicolor § for comparison. 



The results of these two experiments did not appear to conform 

 to the theory that the cock was homozygous for sex cJ d . 



These experiments had also shown that the male had not 

 transmitted to his female F 2 offspring such constant purity of 

 male plumage. In the first experiment, Silver x Swinhoe, out of 

 four males three were " Si. Svv.," one only pure " Sw.," and the 

 only two males that lived in the second experiment, formosus 

 X versicolor, were both " Fo. Ve." 



Mr. J. T. Cunningham, M.A., F.Z.S., read a paper on Men- 

 delian Experiments on Fowls. The paper described the characters 

 of ten individuals of the F2 generation reared from a pair of F I's 

 produced by a cross between Silky $ x Bankiva J made by 

 Mr. D. Seth-Smith. The characters recognised were seven in 

 number — namely, colour of plumage, character of plumage (whether 

 silky or normal), comb, pigmentation of skin and internal tissues, 

 toes {i. e. presence or absence of extra toe), feathering of legs, 

 crest on head. The Silky of the original cross had white " silky " 

 plumage, rose comb, crest on head, double hallux, feathered legs, 

 and black pigmented skin. The Bankiva had black-i-ed plumage 

 of normal structure, single comb, unfeathered shanks, normal 

 toes, and normal unpigmented skin, no crest. The dominant 

 characters in the F 1 were coloured plumage of normal structure, 

 rose comb with crest, pigmented skin, feathered legs, and double 

 hallux ; but several of these charactei'S showed irregular domi- 

 nance or intermediate condition. The most important results 

 recorded in the paper were imperfect segregation in the F 2 

 generation in at least two of the characters — namely, the absence 

 of pigmentation in the pluma,ge and the absence of pigmentation 



