130 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCE* 



In this case, the male was heterozygous for condition of tarsus; the 

 hens pure and recessive. The result calls for equal distribution of booted 

 and clean shanks unless "association" occurs. The numbers are too small 

 to have any significance. Even as they stand, however, they have no 

 meaning, if coupling be made responsible for the distribution of the 

 characters. 



When the Langshan male was crossed to the black hens (both sexes 

 booted, but the hens heterozygous) all of the offspring were booted, 

 which is in accordance with dominance of booted shanks. 



White Feathers in Wings. — In the P 2 young birds, the presence of 

 white and partly White feathers in the wings was noticed (Plate XIX, 

 figs. /-/?, o, v and w). They were most obvious in the black birds, 

 perhaps because of the sharper contrast. These feathers are some of the 

 primaries and a few of the coverts at the base of the primaries. As 

 shown in Plate XIX, figs. / to h, they are rarely pure white, but often 

 mottled or splotched. They were not recorded in the P x birds, and if 

 present they were overlooked. The records of birds without and with 

 these white feathers were as follows : 



5 $ 



Barred, no white 6 4 



" with " 2 



Black, no white 6 4 



! ; " with " : 1 3 



In all, there were 20 chicks without and 6 with white feathers. This 

 looks like a case of Mendelian inheritance, but it may be purely a coinci- 

 dence. . We do not know how often such feathers occur in chicks of the 

 original breeds, or whether they are only juvenile, or physiological effects 

 of the condition of the bird. Probably they would have disappeared in 

 later molts, had .the chicks been kept longer. - 



When the Langshan cock was bred to the black F x hens, 4 of the chicks 

 had no white and 14 had white in the wings. If the black male is hetero- 

 zygous for. this condition, the result is not in accordance with the assump- 

 tion that this is a Mendelian recessive character. 



When the Dominique hens were bred to the F 1 barred males, there 

 was no white in the ] 5 recorded offspring. This result is not in harmony 

 with the same supposition, but the black male used in the last experiment 

 was not the same father as for the barred males of the first cross. The 

 father of the barred male in the first case was a brother of this one. It 

 is still possible, therefore, that one male was homozygous and the other 

 heterozygous for the white-feathered condition. Without, however, fuller 

 information, not much weight can be given to these results. 



