MENDELIAX EXPERIMENTS WITH FOWLS. 249 



somatic or secondary characters and the actual sex. It is certain 

 that the somatic characters of the female of a particular breed 

 are actually tiansmitted by the male, and there are no facts 

 known which support the assumption that positive charactei's, 

 if the female possessed them, would not be transmitted in the 

 same way. 



In a second experiment Davenport crossed the Tosa male 

 with a female dark Brahma. In this case only the F^ generation 

 was reared, namely 16 males and 5 females. In some of the 

 male hybrids the tail-feathers showed greater length than those 

 of the adult Hrahma, but as they were only six months old at 

 the time the Report was written, the inheritance of the tail 

 character was not completely known. 



In my cross between the Tosa cock and Dorking lien only three 

 Fj chicks were hatched and reared in 190.5. They were all hens. 

 Two of them had the double hallux which occurs in the Dorking, 

 on both sides, the third on one side only. The combs were larger 

 than those of the Japanese hens ; the coloration was .speckled 

 much like that of the Japanese hens, eacli feather with a light 

 shaft, but the coloration of the Dorking hen is not very different, 

 and I did not pay much attention to this character. 



In 1906 the three Fj hens were kept with a pure-bred 

 Japanese cock. The eggs of the hybrids were brown in shell- 

 colour, while those of the old Dorking hen were white. The 

 egg-colour of the Japiinese was therefore dominant. This is 

 another ca.se for the Mendelians to cons^ider. Surely the colour 

 of the egg-shell must be a female character, and here it is trans- 

 ferred to the female hybrids by the male. The eggs were also 

 snraller than those of the Dorking, anothei' egg chai'acter derived 

 from the Japanese cock. 



Two broods of F./s, i. e. F, 2 X Jap. d , w-ere reared. In the 

 first brood 5 chicks were hatched and 3 died in the egg : two of 

 the 5 had the double hallux, three had normal toes, all those in the 

 egg had normal toes. Thus the number with double hallux was 

 2 out of 8, whereas the expectation, as the character is dominant, 

 was equal numbers of each character. Ultimately three of these 

 chicks were reared, and all were cocks, one with double hallux, 

 two with normal toes. 



The second brood hatched con.sisted of 11 chicks, of which 

 .3 had the double hallux and 8 had normal toes. The two broods 

 together therefore give 5 with double hallux to 14 with normal 

 toes, where the expectation was ecjual numbers. Of the second 

 brood 5 were cocks and 6 hens. Thus of the F./s there were in 

 all 8 cocks, and if the long tail was dominant every one would 

 show it, while if it were recessive half would have the long tail 

 and half the short tail of the Doi'king. The result showed 

 that the character was dominant, as it was recognised in all the 

 birds except one which died before the character was definitely 

 visible. 



One cock and five hens of these F^'s were kept to breed from. 



