GENETICS: R. PEARL 
675 
Conceivably, its color may at times serve to warn predatory foes, 
but the evidence herein adduced makes it clear that the pigmentation 
of Chromodoris plays no necessary role of this kind. We are conse- 
quently at Kberty to infer that the conspicuous coloration did not de- 
velop, as the result of selection, according to the scheme proposed by 
the theory of warning coloration. 
An illustrated account of this work will be submitted for publication 
later. 
SOME EFFECTS OF THE CONTINUED ADMINISTRATION OF 
ALCOHOL TO THE DOMESTIC FOWL, WITH SPECIAL 
REFERENCE TO THE PROGENY 
By Raymond Pearl 
BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION* 
Read before the Academy, November 13,1916. Received, November 13.1916 
L In a recent number of these Proceedings there was presented^ a 
summary statement of the results which had been obtained up to Feb- 
ruary 1, 1916, in a series of experiments designed to test the effect upon 
the progeny of the continued daily administration, by the inhalation 
method, of either ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol, or ether to the parents, 
the domestic fowl being the form used in the work. The chief result 
was that the offspring of parents which had inhaled the vapor of one 
or another of the substances mentioned, for one hour each day over 
an average period of 210 days each, were measurably superior to the 
offspring of untreated parents in respect of the following characters 
or attributes: prenatal mortality, postnatal mortality at all ages, weight 
at hatching, adult weight, rate of growth, and percentage of abnormali- 
ties or defects of development. The offspring of untreated parents 
were superior to those of treated parents only in respect of their num- 
ber; the untreated parents produced a larger total number. 
It is the purpose of the present paper to report in brief and condensed, 
but numerical, form the results which have been obtained since the data 
at which the former report ended. The data included are those ob- 
tained in the breeding and rearing season of 1916. The length of the 
period over which the parents had been given daily treatments was of 
course longer by one year than in the 1915 breeding season. Thus the 
total germ dosage index^ for the 1916 matings ranged from 458 to 1138, 
with a mean value of 562.9 days, for the parental generation, and from 
0 to 266, with a mean of 40.6, for the grandparental generation. 
