Chap. XY. 
SEXUALLY-LIMITED INHEKITAXCE. 
157 
would have a much shorter tail than that of the pure 
offspring of Soemmerring’s pheasant.^ 
Our fancier, in order to make his new breed with the 
males of a decided pale-blue tint, and the females un- 
changed, would have to continue selecting the males 
during many generations ; and each stage of paleness 
would have to be fixed in the males, and rendered 
latent in the females. The task would be an extremely 
difiScult one, and has never been tried, but might pos- 
sibly succeed. The chief obstacle would be the early 
and complete loss of the pale-blue tint, from the neces- 
sity of reiterated crosses with the slaty female, the 
latter not having at first any latent tendency to produce 
pale-blue offspring. 
On the other hand, if one or two males were to vary 
ever so slightly in paleness, and the variations were 
from the first limited in their transmission to the male 
sex, the task of making a new breed of the desired 
kind would be easy, for such males would simply have 
to be selected and matched with ordinary females. An 
analogous case has actually occurred, for there are 
breeds of the pigeon in Belgium ^ in which the males 
alone are marked with black striae. In the case of the 
fowl, variations of colour limited in their transmission to 
the male sex habitually occur. Even wEen this form of 
inheritance prevails, it might well happen that some 
of the successive steps in the process of variation might 
be transferred to the female, who would then come to 
resemble in a slight degree the male, as occurs in some 
breeds of the fowl. Or again, the greater number, but 
2 Temminck says that the tail of the female Pliasianus Soemmerringii 
is only six inches long, ‘ Planches coloriehs,’ vol. v. 1838, p. 487 and 
488 : the measurements above given were made for me by Mr. Sclater. 
For the common pheasant, see Macgillivray, ‘ Hist. Brit. Birds,’ vol. i. 
p. 118 - 121 . 
^ Dr. Chapuis, ‘Le Pigeon Voyageur Beige,’ 1865, p. 87. 
