Goat’s Change of Sex.

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1922, Page 1

Goat’s Change of Sex.

HULL, October 2. Dr. F. A. E .Crew, whose references last year to the existence of crowing hens attracted so much attention, had a. crowded audience at his lecture before the British Association to-day on intersexuality in domesticated animals. He devoted himself chiefly to the goat tribe. A ease was known to him, he said, in which a goat which hail won prizes when an immature female, came later to assume male characteristic*, and in its behaviour was a male. More than 30 cases similar to that had been brought to his notice. “I believe,” he said, “an animal possessing the functions of the female can undergo such a complete transformation as to function as a male.” Instances of this abnormality dated hack to 1897, when goats of a foreign breed were imported into this country, and ever since then this tendency to produce almormals had been on the increase.

T-Ie suggested that experiments would show that it was possible to produce at will any particular grade of this abnormality, or conversely to wipe it out. Air Julian S. Huxley, speaking of the analysis of the various factors of growth. said experiments had been made which lmd a bearing on the determination of sex, hut it was impossible to make any sort of prophecyon the question of whether science would bo able in future to control sox. ATOMIC ENERGY. The transmutation of elements was discussed by Professor F. W. Aston, of Cambridge, in a lecture on atomic energy. Collisions between nuclear atoms were extremely rare, hut Sir Edward Rutherford had shown that such collisions might result in the destruction of tho atom struck, changing it into an atom of another element. The possibility of such transmutation being accomplished in the future on any scale was of enormous importance. Tf four grammes of hydrogen could ho transmuted into one gramme of helium then .008 grammes of matter would be annihilated. Einstein's theory of relativity showed that when matter was annihilated energy must be produced, and it was calculated that if the hydrogen in a tablespoonful of water could he transmuted into helium, the energy liberated would ho 200.000 kilowatt hours. That brought within our purview a source of energy far beyond the dreams of scientific fiction, with which tho human race could alter the climate of the earth.