THE STUDY OF GENETICS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 15 May 1912, Page 2

THE STUDY OF GENETICS

An anonymous donor recently gave a sum of £20,000 to Cambridge University a3 an endowment for a Chair of Genetics and also arranged to provide and equip an experimental station. The purpose of this station, which will be controlled by the Professor of Genetics, will be to study the problems of evolution and heredity, and scientific men believe that some very important results will be secured. Professor R. t!. Punnett, who probably will occupy the Chair, has carried out many remarkable experiments already with rab- ' bits and poultry. He has secured distinctive color's in the case of the rabbits and has influenced the size and egg-laying qualities of the poultry by means of selective crossing according fay well-ordered plans. The field for work of this kind is enormous and the results that are secured are of advantage, of course, to the whole world. It \a interesting to notice in this connection" thai-, a breeder of stock in England is claiming'to have gone far towards solving the problem "of sex determination. He says that he can. prophesy with a considerable amount of certainty the .sex of the off-spring of animals that he breeds. His secret appears to lie in a close and particular ptudy of the more immediate ancestors of the parents. He discovers what is called a male or female "preponderance in the ancestry and bases 'his rtxpectations on a comparison of the degree of preponderancy of the father and in the mother. The breeder claims now to have made his methods so neai--Ly exact in practice that they should be adopted by all stock breeders, while the Government should provide "breeding studs" or farms where breeders, can have their stock replenished and renewed "by the correction of any undesirable tendencies and the adjustment of the proportions between the sexes." The scheme is not as generally interesting as that of the German expert who says that the sex of babies is a result of pre-natal conditions that can be controlled by dieting the mother, but it suggests many possibilities of advantage to the breeder and the farmer. The Professor of Genetics will have an enormous tield for investigation before him and he may be expected confidently to secure some remarkable results.