HOUWINK’S EXPER. CONC. THE ORIGIN OF SOME DOMESTIC ANIMALS 275 
raise interesting progeny from them; of sonneratian characters we 
could find no trace in them. Nor are there any in the hen 620.1 @ the 
result of a similarcross of the F, bankantam x sonnerati-hen 276.10 
with our Temminckii-cock 196.2which looksvery much like 61 9.6 (see Pl. 
VII) but lacks the crossbars on the secondaries and issomewhat larger. 
Conclusions 
We have endeavoured to give a faithful account of Mr. Houwink’s 
experiments. To do so there was but one way, e. g. to put on record all 
what could still be made out, as a choice could not fail to give a distorted 
picture. This as an excuse for the length of the exposition. 
The results obtained are, this cannot be denied, of a preliminary 
nature only, and one might well ask whether they would have been 
worth publication, if the material were not so hard to obtain. We, 
ourselves, think not; but as the material is so hard to get, that the 
occasion to repeat them may not cocur very soon (our own efforts to 
obtain the wild species used, have so far been completely frustrated), 
the matter takes a quite different aspect. 
The most serious flaw is of course the undeniable fact, that the birds, 
_ which Mr. HOUWINK bought as bankiva’s, were no pure bankiva’s, al- 
though, evidently, not very far removed from them. But even with this 
flaw, the serious nature of which shall not be explained away, we think 
that the pioneer-work of Mr. HOUWINK, to which he gave much time, 
while he defrayed the far from inconsiderable costs, without any out- 
side help, has not been in vain. 
It has shown, beyond doubt, that hybrids between birds very clos 
to bankiva on the one and Gallus sonnerati and G. varius on the other 
hand, are fertile, while the fact, which also came to light, that sonnerati- 
bankantam hybrids, are fertile with varıus-bankantam hybrids raises 
the hope that sonnerati may be crossed with varius, and a fertile pro- 
geny be obtained, from which gorgeous birds may reasonably be 
expected to arise. 
Mr. HouwInk sexperiments certainly finally dispose of the necessity 
to consider Gallus bankiva as the sole ancestor of our domestic poultry. 
On the contrary, the obtention of duckwings from the cross ban- 
kantam X Sonnerati strongly points towards the introduction of the sil- 
verfactor into our domestic poultry by Gallus Sonnerati, and the obten- 
tion of dark colored birds, which again appeared in the breeding-season 
