Being Well-Born: An Introduction to Eugenics

by Michael F. Guyer

New Discoveries in the Field of Heredity.—Writing in 1899, one of America’s well-known zoologists asserts that, “It is easier to weigh an invisible planet than to measure the force of heredity in a single grain of corn.” And yet only two or three years later we find another prominent naturalist saying regarding heredity that, “The experiments which led to this advance in knowledge are worthy to rank with those that laid the foundation of the atomic laws of chemistry.” Again, “The breeding pen is to us what the test-tube is to the chemist—an instrument whereby we examine the nature of our organisms and determine empirically their genetic properties.” Here is a decided contrast of statement and yet both were justifiable at the time of utterance. For even at the writing of the first statement the investigations were in progress which, together with the rediscovery of certain older work, were to transfer our knowledge of heredity from the realm of speculation to that of experiment and disclose certain definite principles of genetic transmission.

Through a knowledge of these principles in fact, the shifting of certain characters is reducible to a series of definitely predictable proportions and the skilled breeder may proceed to the building up of new and permanent combinations of desirable characters according to mathematical ratios and, what is of equal importance, he can secure the elimination of undesirable qualities. While there are many limitations in the application of these principles and while new facts and modifications are constantly being discovered concerning them, nevertheless they represent the first approximations to definite laws of hereditary transmission that we have ever been able to make, and the practical fact confronts us that whatever our theoretical interpretations may be, the principles are so definite that through their application important improvements of crops and domesticated animals have already actually been secured and one may confidently expect still others to follow.

Mendel.—The principles involved are called the Mendelian principles after their discoverer, Gregor Johann Mendel, abbot of a monastery at Brünn, Austria. After eight years of patient experimenting in his cloister garden with plants, chiefly edible peas, he published his results and conclusions in 1866, in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn. While known to a few botanists of that day, the full importance of the contribution was not recognized, and in the excitement of the post-Darwinian controversy, the facts were lost sight of and ultimately forgotten.

Rediscovery of Mendelian Principles.—In 1900 three men, Correns, De Vries and Tschermak, working independently—in different countries, in fact—rediscovered the principles and called attention anew to the long-forgotten work of Mendel which they had come upon in looking over the older literature on plant breeding. These investigators added other examples from their own experiments. Since their rediscovery the principles have been confirmed in essential features and extended by numerous experimentalists with regard to a wide range of hereditary characters in both animals and plants.

Independence of Inheritable Characters.—It has been found that many truly heritable characteristics or traits of an individual, whether plant or animal, are comparatively independent of one another and may be inherited independently. Where there are contrasted characters in father and mother, such as white plumage and black plumage in fowls, smooth coat and wrinkled coat in seed, horns and hornlessness in cattle, long fur and short fur in rabbits, beard and beardlessness in wheat, albino condition and normal condition, etc., there is obviously a bringing together of the determiners of the two traits in the resulting offspring. In the third generation, however, in the progeny of these offspring, the two distinct characters may be set apart again, thus showing that in the second generation while perhaps one only was visible, the factors which determine both were nevertheless present, and moreover, they were present in a separable condition.

Illustration of Mendelism in the Andalusian Fowl.—Let us take as a simple example the case of the Andalusian fowl. Although it is not a case established by Mendel it illustrates certain of the essential conditions underlying Mendelism in a more obvious way than the cases worked out by Mendel himself. The so-called blue Andalusian fowl results from a cross of a color variety of the fowl which is black with one which is white with black-splashed feathers. The result is the same irrespective of which parent is black. When bred with their like, whether from the same parents or different parents, these blue fowls produce three kinds of progeny, approximately one-fourth of which are black like the one grandparent, one-fourth white like the other grandparent, and the remaining half, blue like the parents (Fig. 16). Moreover, the black fowls obtained in this way will, when interbred, produce only black offspring and the same is true of the white fowls. To all appearances as far as color is concerned they are of as pure type as the original grandparents. With the blue fowls, however, the case is different, for when bred together they will produce the same three kinds of progeny that their parents produced and in the same proportions. Again the white and the black are true to type but the blue will always yield the three classes of offspring and this through generation after generation.

Fig. 16

Diagram showing the scheme of inheritance in the blue Andalusian fowl.

These facts may be illustrated graphically as follows where the word “black” indicates the original black parent, “white” the original white (black splashed) parent and “blue” the hybrid offspring.