The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual characters — John Shaqi
The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual charactersMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
The genetic and the operative evidence relating to secondary sexual characters
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Genetics; Poultry; Sex (Biology)
Finding that the testes of F₂ hen-feathered birds were often flat and
pear-shaped instead of rounded and cylindrical, as in ordinary cocks,
and that they were often black in color, suggested, as already stated,
that the testes of the Sebright might be hermaphrodite in some element.
It seemed not impossible that egg-cells might be found. I made a
considerable number of sections of the testes of these birds and
examined them under the microscope; not finding any egg or egg-like
bodies, the slides were laid aside, but the idea that in some other way
the Sebright’s testes might correspond to the ovary of the female next
recurred to my mind. Consequently, when in the summer of 1918 I had some
new material derived from a castrated Sebright male that had partly
regenerated its testes and was again going back to hen-feathering, and
pieces from one of the old testes of a castrated bird, I asked Miss
Boring, who was then in Woods Hole, to make some preparations and
examine them to see if she could detect any such elements in them as she
had found in the female. Miss Boring reported the occurrence of luteal
cells in the testes from hen-feathered males, and the results have been
published in a brief preliminary paper (1918). The abundance of these
clear cells, supposedly gland-cells with endocrine influences, in the
testes of hen-feathered birds is in sharp contrast to their absence in
the normal adult cock birds. It seems to follow, therefore, that the
hen-feathering in the Sebrights is due to the presence of these cells,
whose function is the same as of the similar cells in the female, _i.
e._, the suppression in both of cock-feathering. Castrating the Sebright
produces its effect by the removal of these cells that are responsible
for the suppression of cock-feathering.
The occurrence of luteal cells in young stages of other races of poultry
raises the question as to whether in these races the first or juvenile
plumage, that resembles that of the hen rather than that of the cock,
may not also be due to an internal secretion from these cells, or
whether this juvenile plumage is only the plumage of a characteristic
stage in development. Castration of young chicks ought to settle this
point. Such castration experiments have been made by Goodale. The
absence of any reference to any effect on the juvenile plumage in these
early castrated birds probably meant that they did not develop
precociously cock-feathering, and he writes me that he examined them
carefully and that their plumage is like that of the normal chicks.
Geoffrey Smith has reported the occurrence of two kinds of males in a
race of Leghorns, the males of one of which become cock-feathered before
the other. May not this difference depend on the length of time
endocrine cells remain or begin to develop? A histological study of the
two types would be of the greatest interest.
ENDOCRINE CELLS IN THE TESTES OF MAMMALS.
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