Vol.. 6, 1920 
GENETICS: GUYER AND SMITH 
135 
of four yearvS and which are still in progress. To state briefly some of our 
results, we have been able occasionally to produce what appear to be 
specific antenatal lens-defects in rabbits and mice by means of fowl-serum 
sensitized to rabbit-lens and mouse-lens respectively. And, what is prob- 
ably of more interest, breeding experiments with the affected rabbits show 
that the defect, once established, may be transmitted to subsequent 
generations. 
Since most of the work was done with rabbits the following account 
is concerned with them alone. Chickens were employed as the source of 
the antibodies. To produce these, the fresh lenses of rabbits were pulped 
thoroughly in a mortar and diluted with normal salt solution. By means 
of a hypodermic syringe about four cubic centimeters of the emulsion was 
injected into the peritoneal cavity of the fowl. In later experiments some 
of the fowls were injected intravenously as well as intraperitoneally. 
Ordinarily the fowls were treated with such lens-emulsions at intervals 
of a week for four or five weeks and were then allowed to rest a week of 
ten days before bleeding. 
In the mean time rabbits had been bred so as to have the young ad- 
vanced to about the tenth day of pregnancy. From four to seven cubic 
centimeters of the sensitized fowl-serum (sometimes diluted with normal 
saline) were injected into the pregnant rabbits at intervals of two or three 
days from about the tenth to the twentieth days of pregnancy. Some 
rabbits died from the treatment, many young were killed in utero, but a 
goodly number also survived. Among the latter were occasional individuals 
with opaque (sometimes liquid) lenses and eyes otherwise defective 
(reduced size, cleft iris, persistent hyaloid artery, bluish or silvery color 
instead of the characteristic red of the albino eye, and occasionally almost 
complete disappearance of the eyeball). Taking into account the method 
of embryological development of the eye, however, these defects are prob- 
ably all attributable to the early injury of the lens. 
Out of sixty-one surviving young from mothers treated during preg- 
nancy with lens-sensitized serum, four had one or both eyes conspicuously 
defective and five others had eyes which, though less noticeably modified, 
were nevertheless abnormal. Others also may have had their eyes affected, 
but if so, the condition was not observable from the exterior. As a matter 
of fact, liquid lenses were found in a few young ones which were dissected 
in the earliest experiments. This condition was not detectable in the 
living animal. Of the controls, from mothers treated with pure (i. e., 
unsensitized) fowl-serum twelve Hving young were obtained, and from 
others treated with serum sensitized to rabbit-tissue other than lens, 
thirty-six young were secured, or a total of forty-eight which survived 
long enough to show the condition of their eyes. In not one of these forty- 
eight controls was there evidence of eye-defect. The experiments indicate, 
therefore, that the effect of the lens-sensitized serum is specific. 
