174 THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST [Vol. L 



is ever so much greater in the alcoholic lines. There is 

 also some tendency on the part of the alcoholic animals to 

 produce a greater proportion of small litters and this aids 

 somewhat towards the perpetuation of their lines. 



Inbreeding tends to emphasize the alcoholic effects. 

 This is probably due to related animals responding to the 

 treatment in closely similar ways on account of the simi- 

 larity of their constitutions. Inbreeding, as such, may 

 be harmful. But inbreeding added to the alcohol effects 

 produces a much worse condition in the offspring than 

 either inbreeding or alcoholism alone could do. 



The data from alcoholized male lines indicate that the 

 female offspring from alcoholic males are less viable and 

 more frequently deformed than the male offspring. And 

 heterogeneous mating s of such male and female offspring 

 further emphasize the same inferiority on the part of the 

 female offspring from treated males. This is a very sig- 

 nificant fact. 



The fact that the offspring of one sex differ in quality 

 from those of the opposite sex, and that the female off- 

 spring of an alcoholic male are inferior to his male off- 

 spring suggests at once a difference between the germ 

 cells concerned in the production of the male and female 

 young. Miss Stevens showed that the spermatocytes of 

 the male guinea pig contained a heteromorphic pair of 

 chromosomes and half of the spermatozoa would be ex- 

 pected to receive one member, the X chromosome, of the 

 heteromorphic pair and one half of the spermatozoa 

 the other member, the Y chromosome, of the heteromor- 

 phic pair. We now have two possibilities in explanation 

 of the above facts. In the first place, it may be assumed 

 that the alcohol acts similarly on all of the chromatin to 

 injure it. Thus a mass action would cause the sperma- 

 tozoa carrying the larger member of the heteromorphic 

 pair to deliver more injured chromatin and the other 

 spermatozoa with a less total amount of injured chro- 

 matin would deliver less when they fertilize eggs contain- 

 ing equal amounts of normal chromatin. The fertilized 



