Hormones and Heredity: A Discussion of the Evolution of Adaptations and the Evolution of SpeciesCunningham, J. T. (Joseph Thomas)
Science
Hormones and Heredity: A Discussion of the Evolution of Adaptations and the Evolution of Species
Cunningham, J. T. (Joseph Thomas)
Endocrinology; Heredity; Hormones; Mendel's law
The breast feathers are rufous, especially on the left side. The
tail coverts show marked male characters, more especially on the left
side. In the tail, however, the barred character of the male is not
present on one side, absent on the other, but in most of the feathers is
confined to one, the _outer_ side of each feather. With regard to the
gonads, in this bird a single organ was found on the left side, _i.e._ in
the position of the ovary in normal females, and there was no trace of a
gonad on the right side. The organ present was small, 3/4 inch long by 1/2
inch broad, and microscopic sections showed in one part actively growing
areas of tubular gland structure in some of which bodies like spermatozoa
could be detected, while in another were fibrous tissue with degenerating
cysts. The latter appear to have been degenerating egg follicles. The
author concludes that the organ was originally a functional ovary, and
that the ovarian portion had atrophied while a male portion had become
functionally active.
Another case in birds was described by Poll [Footnote: _B.B. Ges. Naturf.
Freunde_, Berlin, 1909.] and is mentioned by Doncaster. [Footnote:
_Determination of Sex_, Cambridge, 1914.] It is that of a Bullfinch
which had the male and female plumage sharply separated on the two sides
of the body. The right side of the ventral surface was red like a normal
male, the left side grey like a normal female. In this case there was a
testis on the right side, on the left an ovary as in normal females.
A third case in birds, somewhat different from the two first mentioned, is
that of a domestic fowl described by Shattock and Seligmann. [Footnote:
_Trans. Pathol. Soc._ (London), vol. 57, Part i., 1906.] It was a bird of
the Leghorn breed, two years old, and had the fully developed comb and
wattles of the cock. Each leg bore a thick blunt spur, nearly an inch in
length, but in the Leghorn breed spurs are by no means uncommon in hens of
mature age, before they have ceased to lay eggs. In plumage the characters
were mainly female. The colour being white could not show sexual
differences, the neck hackles were but moderately developed, saddle
hackles practically absent, the tail resembled that of the hen. There was
a fully developed oviduct on the left side, on the right another less than
half the full length. There was also a vas deferens on each side. There
was a gonad on each side, that of the right about one-fourth the size of
that on the left. In microscopic structure the right gonad resembled a
testis consisting entirely of tubuli lined by an epithelium consisting of
a single layer of cells. In one part of this organ the tubules were larger
than elsewhere, and one of them exhibited spermatogenesis in progress. The
left and larger gonad had a quite similar structure, but at its lower end
were found two ova enclosed within a follicular epithelium.
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