Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings.

  • Herbert Spencer Jennings
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PROMETHEUS inherit, in the usual Mendelian manner, an inconvenient tendency to produce supernumerary legs. But if those inheriting this are kept properly warmed they do not produce these undesirable appendages. In the cold, only those individuals acquire the extra legs that have inherited the gene to which such are due ; but even they need not do so, if conditions are right. In the same animal, some individuals have fewer facets in the compound eye than do others. The number of facets is found to be hereditary, in the sense that under the same conditions parents with few facets produce offspring with few facets, in the Mendelian manner. But the number also depends on the environment ; individuals with the same inheritance show different numbers of facets, depending on the temperature [52]