Mendelism: Third EditionPunnett, Reginald Crundall
Science
Mendelism: Third Edition
Punnett, Reginald Crundall
Mendel's law
Nor is this the only reflection that the Brown Leghorn suggests. Owing to
the repulsion between the factors for femaleness and for pigment
inhibition, it is impossible by any form of mating to make a hen which is
homozygous for the inhibitor factor. She has bartered away for femaleness
the possibility of ever receiving a double dose of this factor. We know
that in some cases, as, for example, {114} that of the blue Andalusian
fowl, the qualities of the individual are markedly different according as
to whether he or she has received a single or a double dose of a given
factor. It is not inconceivable that some of the qualities in which a man
differs from a woman are founded upon a distinction of this nature. Certain
qualities of intellect, for example, may depend upon the existence in the
individual of a double dose of some factor which is repelled by femaleness.
If this is so, and if woman is bent upon achieving the results which such
qualities of intellect imply, it is not education or training that will
help her. Her problem is to get the factor on which the quality depends
into an ovum that carries also the factor for femaleness.
* * * * *
{115}
CHAPTER XI
SEX (_continued_)
The cases which we have considered in the last chapter belong to a group in
which the peculiarities of inheritance are most easily explained by
supposing that the female is heterozygous for some factor that is not found
in the male. Femaleness is an additional character superposed upon a basis
of maleness, and as we imagine that there is a separate factor for each the
full constitutional formula for a female is FfMM, and for a male ffMM. Both
sexes are homozygous for the male element, and the difference between them
is due to the presence or absence of the female element F.
There are, however, other cases for which the explanation will not suffice,
but can be best interpreted on the view that the male is heterozygous for a
factor which is not found in the female. Such a case is that recently
described by Morgan in America for the pomace fly (_Drosophila
ampelophila_). Normally this little insect has a red eye, but white eyed
individuals are known to occur as rare sports. Red eye is dominant to
white. In their relation to sex the eye colours of the pomace fly {116} are
inherited on the same lines as the _grossulariata_ and _lacticolor_
patterns of the currant moth, but with one essential difference. The factor
which repels the red-eye factor is in this case to be found in the male,
and here consequently it is the male which must be regarded as heterozygous
for a sex factor that is lacking in the female.
[Illustration]
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