INHERITANCE OF PLUMAGE-COLOR. 19 



3. Inheritance of Yellow X Lizard Coloration. 



The " Lizard " canary is closely related to the " Green ; " it differs 

 in that the margin of each of the dorsal body feathers is much lighter 

 than the rest of the web — the feathers are "laced." This condition 

 is dimly seen in the green canary, but is much exaggerated in the 

 "Lizard." The light tip may be either yellow (jonque) as in the 

 "Gold Lizard" or white (mealy) as in the "Silver Lizard." A second 

 characteristic of the Lizard is a light area or "cap" on top of the 

 head over the eyes, which, similarly, is either reddish or white. The 

 characters of the Gold and of the Silver Lizard are said to be quite 

 stable in straight breeding. 



In my experiments (Nos. 507 and 512) I crossed a Gold Lizard 

 (male) with a crestless yellow Norwich canary. One young was 

 obtained. This had the yellow cap of the Lizard parent. The bird 

 was mottled, but the dark feathers were laced (like those of the Gold 

 Lizard) with yellow. When a Silver Lizard (female) was mated with 

 a yellow Harz I got three young, closely alike. All had a cap, but 

 this was yellow instead of silver. All were mottled and the dark 

 body feathers were generally laced. It appears, therefore, from these 

 few experiments, that cap and lacing are dominant over their absence 

 and "gold" is dominant over silver, /.^., jonque over mealy. 



4. Inheritance of Cinnamon (Female) X Green (Male). 



In canary hybridization cinnamon has long been known to behave 

 in a peculiar way. A cinnamon male mated with a female of another 

 race may produce some cinnamon offspring ; but a pure non-cinnamon 

 male mated to a cinnamon female produces no cinnamons. Also, the 

 offspring of cinnamons bred to greens are often of a better cinnamon 

 color than their parents. My own experience consists of two progeny 

 of a cinnamon Belgium female X green Belgian male. Both are of 

 a beautiful green color and show no trace of the cinnamon color. The 

 female cinnamon seems to be fully recessive to green. 



Series III.— INHERITANCE OF CHARACTERISTICS IN HYBRIDS BETWEEN 

 THE EUROPEAN GOLDFINCH AND THE YELLOW CANARY. 



The statement is frequently seen that it makes a great difference 

 in heredity whether the individuals crossed belong to allied races or to 

 distinct species. Focke (1881, 473) states that in race-hybrids characters 

 of the parents do not blend as they do in species-hybrids. It is 

 important to know if this law holds universally, and the finches offer 

 a good opportunity to test it. They are easily hybridized and the 

 results of such experiments have often been recorded by writers on 

 cage-birds (</". Blakston). The commonest of these hybrids is that 



