i68 



Scientific Proceedings (39). 



favorable effects on the protein metabolism is less than .5 gram 

 per kilogram. 



108 (518) 



Inheritance of plumage color in poultry. 

 By C. B. Davenport. 



[From the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Station for 

 Experimental Evolution.] 



The experiments of Dr. C. C. Guthrie who transplanted hens' 

 ovaries to foster mothers of different plumage color from their own 

 and was led to the conclusion that the engrafted ovaries became 

 functional and their eggs gained certain characteristics from the 

 foster mothers' are not at all convincing to the student of normal 

 heredity of plumage color in poultry; indeed, they justify the 

 opposite conclusions. To test these experiments, I transplanted 

 ovaries from a cinnamon-colored, heavy-boot, pea-combed, four- 

 toed, low-nostriled hen which breeds true to a white, non-boot, 

 V-combed, five-toed, high-nostriled hen, and mated her with a 

 cock whose characters resembled those of the hen from which the 

 eggs had been borrowed. Had the engrafted ovary been func- 

 tional, the chicks must all have been like the cock. Actually, 

 they were exactly what expectation calls for when such a cock is 

 mated to a hen like the so-called foster-mother. The engrafted 

 eggs are not functional; the ovary had regenerated. 



Six experiments of this sort were made altogether and in no case 

 was there evidence of a functional graft; far less of an influence 

 on the eggs of the foster mother's soma. 



109 (519) 



A new and comparatively rapid method for the detection of 

 liquefying bacteria. 



By JOHN C. TORRE Y. 



[From the Department of Experimental Pathology, Cornell University 



Medical School.] 



The results obtained by Feldstein and Weil 1 with Ostwald's 

 viscosimeter in an investigation of the interaction of ferment and 



l Proc. of the Soc. for Exper. Biol, and Med., 1910, vii, 61. 



