HEREDITY FARM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 14 November 1913, Page 2

HEREDITY FARM.

The most curious farm in England is probably Major Hirst's l at the village of Burba-go, near Birmingham. A hundred acres aro entirely given up to the study of heredity in plants and animals, and the Major extends his researches to the"village, which, owing to some flippant criticism, has beooTie so se.nstitve on the subject of red hair that the members of the British . Association were not invited to visit it. Major Hurst claims to have proved in Burbago that red hair in people, >and the chestnut colour in horses, are the true "aristocratic" colours; that is to say, off-spring always inherit them if they occur in both parents, a fidelity to type that does not occur with any otthor colour. According to the Daily Mail's correspondent, a still more remarkable tiling is on the way to be proved by Major Hurst. An ear for music, it sctrns, dde* not come only from the enr, and this sense is as-aristocratic as tlio colour rod; that is, all child-

i'on of musical parents are musical. But there is also great comfort for the unmusical. They all have music in them, but they have an extra quality which prevents the. latent musicalness being effective. They afro not short of a quality, but thev have a quality extra, and their children may therefore bo musical. Tho fact, which is still debatable in men, is, in different qualities, absolutely proved in the caso of flowers. Major Hurst showed tho con espondont beautiful eaniations and roses which owed their beauty to tho taking away of a quality, not to the addition of one. Tho Major is investigating the behaviour of pigeons to determine whether their homing instinct is something more than instinct—intelligence, and he thinks that feeblemindedness is heriditary in them a«s in men. But perhaps the most curious fact mentioned by Major Hurst related to colour-blindness. A col-our-blind man married to a normal woman has only normal children, both boys and girls.* Tho boys never hand on tho affection, but the girls, even when married to normal men, : have eolour-Wihd sons. The affection thus appears- in males, but is transmitted by females. We really know comparatively little about heredity, but it is the" patient, unceasing work of such men that is slowly but surely advancing our knowledge.