No. 528] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



755 



Fowl pattern as instances of this kind. When Silkies are 

 crossed with Brown Leghorns, the latter breed introduces an 

 inhibiting factor for the intense black pigmentation in the 

 flesh of the Silkies, and this inhibiting factor appears to behave 

 as if it were allelomorphic to femaleness. The inheritance of 

 the factor is not yet fully worked out. In addition to these 

 cases we have that of melanism in Abraxas grossulariata when 

 crossed with A. lacticolor. Black eyes in canaries when crossed 

 with pink eyes appear to behave in a similar manner. We have 

 already mentioned above shank color in poultry in this connec- 



Dr. E. A. Gortner, of the Station for Experimental Evolution, 

 Cold Spring Harbor, New York, in The American Xati kai.tst 

 for August, 1910, gives results of quantitative determinations of 

 melanin in white wool and hlaek. lie finds 1.84 per cent, in 

 black wool and only .06 per cent, in white. He expresses the 

 opinion that the melanin in white is a decomposition product 

 of keratin and not a true melanin, thus disproving Riddle's 

 assumption that dominant white is a more advanced stage of oxi- 

 dation than black. He advances the theory that dominant 

 whites are due to the presence of an anti-oxidase which prevents 

 pigment formation, while recessive whites have neither power to 

 form pigments nor to inhibit the formation. 



OstenfehT 10 finds that the number of chromosomes in the apo- 

 gamic race of Rosa canina is about double the number in the 

 normal sexual race in the same species, thus indicating that the 

 reduction division is omitted. 



It has generally been supposed that when an organism is 

 moved from one environment to another distinctly different, 

 there is a tendency for the type to break up. This thing has 

 been described as "new place effect." There has been very 

 little investigation bearing directly on this question, and most 

 of it has related to forms more or less mixed in inheritance 

 rather than to pure lines of the same inheritance. Data bearing 

 on this subject are important and very much needed. An impor- 

 tant contribution to our knowledge of the subject is found in 

 Bulletin 128 of the Bureau of Chemistry of the U. S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. In this bulletin LeClerc and Leavitt give 

 the results of experiments on wheat. Kubanka Wheat grown 

 •"Bateson's MendeUan Principles of Heredity," pp. 81-87. 

 "Zcitsch. f. Induk. Abst. und Vererb., Bd. Ill, H. 4, May, 1910, p. 253. 



