TO EVOLVE A MORE PERFECT RACE

North Otago Times, 8 January 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

TO EVOLVE A MORE PERFECT RACE

Trofessor C, B. Davenport Is hinting to produce a cat which shall be while, blue-eyed, deaf, long-haired, tailkss, and polydactyl, or possessing superfluous toes. The experiment, if successful, will prove, he informs us, that science can absolutely control the development of a cat's.physical characteristics. Now, tho cat bears an exceedingly close resemblance to man in physical stricture and constitution, and, therefore, it is believed that it will at some future time be possible to control the physical development of man. This is the ultimate object of these remnrkat.le experiments, stated in as simple and popular manner as possible, although the expei'ts who arc engaged upon them would hesitate to state this object without many mollifications which the luyiuaii would find it dillicult to understand.

Scientific men may produce in the future (i large-brained, broad-shoul-dered, big-Bui)ged, highly intellectual niaii-iii fact, an almost perfect man, combining all the best qualities of all the highest existing types of man anil infinitely superior to any one of them. The' lay reader will naturally wonder why the scientists should begin by seeking to produce the very remarkable type of cat mentioned. It is not because a white, blue-eyed deaf, lloug-haired, tailless, polydactyl cat is any more valuable, intcll'jctual, useful, or beautiful than an ordinary cat. It is because the combination of such remarkable qualities in a specially bred specimen would prove that their combination In one animal was the result of scientific manipulation.

If less strange but possibly niQre useful feline characteristics, Mich as strength, lung power and keenness of scent, were aimed at, there would be a possibility of arguing that their presence in the specially bred cat was the result of accident, but that could not be argued in the use of the experimental eat now contemplated. The aim of the experiments, then, at the present stage is not so much to produce a perfect animal as to prove how far scientific control is effective in_ producing a predetermined type of cat.

Professor Davenport, speaking of these experiments, says :-"If characteristics are for the mcyst part inherited entire and can be combined in various ways, like atoms of chemistry, it should be possible to obtain any desired combination." When the laws arc known and understood, it will be comparatively simple to apply them in the work of developing all other animals—including manon similar predetermined lines. Professor Davenport, in his selection of the cat, wnß governed mainly by the fecundity and structural organisation of the cat, for, as has been pointed out, considered anatomically, the cat in many ways resembles man, and success in obtaining a desired combination of characteristics in the one will prove the possibility o,f achieving a like result in the other. Of (ho numerous kittens already produced several are marked by one or more of the sought-for peculiarities, and it is by keeping these qualities possessed in the strongest degreo and eliminating those not wanted, that he expects to present to the world a new race or species of cat. But Professor Davenport does not confine his studies of Inheritance in domestic animals to cats alone, when beginning his experiments he also provided himself with several wild and domestic fowl, with ducks, pigeons, canaries, goldfinches, Irish goats, sheep—numbering among them two fivc-nippled ewes and one sixnipplcd lamb—and with Jersey and Holstein cattle. With all these ho is experimenting on, lines similar, from a scientific standpoint, to those he has laid out for himself with the family of cats .-"Science Sittings,"