HEREDITY FARM.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1876, 9 October 1913, Page 11

HEREDITY FARM.

SCIENTISTS AND SEX MYSTERY.

A combination of men of science in many branches is to pay a visit to what may bo called a farm near Leicester, where tho questions of sex, the inheritance of colour, and the dominance of certain conflicting parental qualities aro visibly illustrated in a most original way. The zoologists, tlie botanists, and the agriculturists, each of whom has a separate section at the British Association, were to break their discussion at the annual meeting at Birmingham by a joint visit to this farm, wdiich caters for each group. In ono part aro rows of peqs which wero tho first plants to disclose Mendel's strange law of inheritance. In another a variety of rodents and rabbits with their families can bo inspected by thoso who have views on tho inheritance of colour. But this is only introductory to tho latost advance. Major Hurst, tho founder of the farm, was among tho first to discover the working of somo of'those laws, illustrated on his farm, on human beings. He has drawn tho neighbouring villages into co-operation, so that whilo tho botanists and farmers are inspecting tho generations of tall peas and short peas or rust-proof wheats and sparrow-proof barleys, the zoologists will bo ablo to examine family groups of villagers and to mark whether tallness, as in sweet peas, or "brownr.css" in eyes aro "dominant" over shortness or "blucness." "MALENESS" & "FEMALENESS." Thoro is scarcoly any department of botany or zoology into which tho scienco of heredity, uniquely displayed on this farm, is not probing. The sccret of tha inheritance of sex, that is "maleness" and "femaleness" has been moro or less certainly detected in tho case of certain insects. Certain eye diseases in men, it is now known, aro only handed down to contrary sexes, that is from mother to son or father to daughter; and they nevor lie latent in thoso who do not suffer. Major I-lurstj in partnership with another officer, is endeavouring to "creato" a now species of horse for tho War Offico by working on the laws investigated on his farm. Others of his school, of which the hoadquarters are at Cambridge University, aro trying to induce certain varieties of prolific poultry to lay a brown egg instead of a whito egg, which has been' their uncommercial habit. In regard to people, no definite laws of heredity havo hitherto been discovered except in eyes, both as to disease and colour, and to some extent in the shape of hands. On the whole subject some fresh light should be thrown during the coming moeting of the British Association, held under the presidency of Sir Oliver Lodge.