Читать книгу Sex & Character онлайн

28 страница из 80

This source of error, the careless acceptance of sexually intermediate forms as representative subjects for measurement, has maimed other investigations and seriously retarded the attainment of genuine and useful results. Those, for instance, who wish to speculate about the cause of the superfluity of male births have to reckon with this source of error. In a special way this carelessness will revenge itself on those who are investigating the ultimate causes that determine sex. Until the exact degree of maleness or femaleness of all the living individuals of the group on which he is working can be determined, the investigator will have reason to distrust both his methods and his hypotheses. If he classify sexually intermediate forms, for instance, according to their external appearance, as has been done hitherto, he will come across cases which fuller investigation would show to be on the wrong side of his results, whilst other instances, apparently on the wrong side, would right themselves. Without the conception of an ideal male and an ideal female, he lacks a standard according to which to estimate his real cases, and he gropes forward to a superficial and doubtful conclusion. Maupas, for instance, who made experiments on the determination of sex in Hydatina senta, a Rotifer, found that there was always an experimental error of from three to five per cent. At low temperatures the production of females was expected, but always about the above proportion of males appeared; so also at the higher temperatures a similar proportion of females appeared. It is probable that this error was due to sexually intermediate stages, arrhenoplasmic females at the high temperature, thelyplasmic males at the low temperature. Where the problem is more complicated, as in the case of cattle, to say nothing of human beings, the process of investigation will yield still less harmonious results, and the correction of the interpretation which will have to be made by allowing for the disturbance due to the existence of sexually intermediate forms will be much more difficult.