Taboo and Genetics - A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family by Melvin Moses Knight;Phyllis Mary Blanchard;Iva Lowther Peters
page 41 of 200 (20%)
page 41 of 200 (20%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
Havelock Ellis[18] and G. Stanley Hall[19] have applied the idea of a "race-type" female with peculiar insistence to the human race. Goodale has finally killed the bird evidence upon which earlier workers so largely founded this doctrine, by showing that the "race type" toward which birds tend unless inhibited by the female ovarian secretion is the male type, not the female. There is a great difference in the way the internal secretions act in birds and in man, as will be pointed out later. It is so important that such a major point as general variability must be supported and corroborated by mammalian evidence to prove anything positively for man. As already noted, the statistical studies of Pearson and Mrs. Hollingworth _et al._ have yielded uniformly negative results. In the utilization of data gathered from non-human species, certain differences in the systems of internal secretion must be taken into account. Birds differ from the human species as to internal secretory action in two vital particulars: (a) In the higher mammals, sex depends upon a "complex" of all the glands interacting, instead of upon the sex glands alone as in birds; (b) The male bird instead of the female is homogametic for sex--i.e., the sperm instead of the eggs is uniform as to the sex chromosome. Insects are (in some cases at least) like birds as to the odd chromosome--the opposite of man. But as to secondary sex-characters they differ from both. These characters do not depend upon any condition of the sex organs, but are determined directly by the chemical factors which determine sex itself.[20] In crustacea, the male is an inhibited female (the exact opposite of |
|


