Abstract
Although of some general interest, the question of the heredity of species-specific properties in animals as indicated by serum reactions has not yet been investigated. While some difficulty exists in discriminating substances derived from closely related species by precipitins, it is easy to do so by the use of hemagglutinins.
After producing agglutinins in rabbits with the blood, for instance of the horse or donkey, one obtains, by absorption with the heterologous blood, solutions which act specifically on the blood of the species used for immunization. In this way the blood corpuscles of a species-hybrid, namely the mule, were examined by means of immune sera against horse, donkey, and mule blood. Of the several possibilities, such as conformity of the blood of the hybrid with that of one parent, a combination of the properties of both, or formation of new substances, the one which actually occurs is the inheritance of agglutinable substances of each parent.
It remains to be estabilished whether the results are different in the cross between the mare and the jack and the reciprocal cross.
We hope to extend the studies to cases of fertile hybrids.
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