4. If feathers are removed at the time of castration, the new feathers show the full effect of the removal of the testes, although they must have begun to develop immediately afterward. It is suggested that by means of this delicate test the time relations of the internal secretion can be profitably studied.
5. Feathers that may have started their development at the time of the operation show the old influence at the tip of the feathers ([plate 10]) and the new one in the rest of the feather. The change is abrupt, although the transition is perfect.
6. Incomplete castration of the hen-feathered male leads to smaller changes in the same direction than those following complete castration.
Where such small pieces of the testis were left that complete cock-feathering followed, the bird slowly changed back to hen-feathering as the testes began to regenerate. When the regenerated pieces were removed the bird became cock-feathered again.
7. One Sebright male whose testes appear to have been completely removed did not change the character of the plumage. No testes were found on autopsy. It is suggested that some other endocrine organs have taken over the function of the testes, but as yet none such can be indicated.
8. In one case an old hen-feathered (F₁) male began to change over to cock-feathering. It was found that his testes had dwindled (probably through disease) to very small size (10 by 5 mm.).
9. The F₁ male of the cross between the Sebright and game is also hen-feathered ([plate 2], fig. 1). After castration he becomes cock-feathered ([plate 2], fig. 4) and shows thereby the genetic type of the heterozygous cock-feathered class in which his hen belongs. The change in this male is even more striking than that in the Sebright. The change in the individual feathers is shown in [plate 7], figs. 1 and 1a.
10. Three types of F₂ hen-feathered castrated males are shown in plate 2, figure 3, and [plate 3], figure 3 and figure 4. The first was a dark bird that changed to a lighter red above. The third a gray bird that became bright red; the second was a light yellow that became deep yellow, etc. The class of hens to which such males belong, as cock-feathered birds, can thus be found out by castration. In this way the F₂, and back-cross, hen-feathered cocks can be classified with the corresponding F₂ cock-feathered males.
11. In the F₂ generation, made up of birds from the direct and reciprocal crosses taken together, there were 29 hen-feathered and 26 cock-feathered males. In the back-cross (F₁ hen by game male) the classes were 2 and 7. The results seem in better accord with the assumption that two factors are present in the Sebright that stand for hen-feathering; that either alone will give hen-feathered birds (intermediate type?), but that both together give the extreme type of hen-feathering seen in the Sebright.
12. The difference in color in the two races (Sebright and Black Breasted Game bantams) is very great. The former have almost uniformly laced feathers, while the latter has the varied plumage of the jungle-fowl. The game is strongly dimorphic in color and color-pattern; the Sebright has the same type of coloration and pattern both in the male and female, but this is deceptive, as castration shows, because the castrated male is as strikingly different from the normal Sebright female as is the cock of other birds from the hen. The resemblance of male and female in this race is due to the suppression of the true male plumage by something produced in the testes. Therefore the heredity of dimorphism resolves itself here into the problem of the heredity of hen-feathering. That the female Sebright has the same genetic factors as the male is shown by the fact that she transmits hen-feathering in the same way as does the male, and also by the fact, as Darwin pointed out, that an old female Sebright whose ovaries had degenerated developed not the hen-feathered plumage of her own cock, but cock-feathered plumage like that of most male poultry.