“Some Mendelian results in animal breeding”

Abstract

The essence of Mendelism in inheritance is its alternative character. In this it is opposed to blending inheritance (as in human skin color) which had been regarded as the typical sort of inheritance. At the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution certain new cases of nonblending inheritance have already been found. Among sheep it appears from Dr. Alexander Graham Bell's records that the offspring of two black sheep are (probably always) black, although one or more of the grandparents were white. It looks as if black color (like albinism) might be recessive. Among canary birds it is found that of the offspring of crested and of plain headed birds, some are crested and some are not. Poultry have been studied because of the numerous characters they exhibit. When a Japanese long-tailed, clean-legged cock was crossed on a white bantam hen, the two surviving offspring were highly colored like the father and had abundant feathers on the legs like the mother.