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" CONSERVATISM "
196 for The Lancet or others to obtain and report. Recently, for instance, members of the staff of University College, London, were asked for signatures for yet another similar Cort protest. It would be easy to add up the figures in question of those who signed and did not sign. Interesting data could also be obtained by recording over the years the activities of certain particularly prominent letterwriters, noting the causes they champion but more particularly the causes they do not champion. I think the results would be statistically significant.
Closer analysis of April 29 figures for this cross reveals that the least successful breeder, who produced only 70%, produced only 45% of pullets ; while the most successful, producing 83.5%, gave 52% pullets. With the cross D/C the proportion of cockerels rose for several weeks. Two successive batches gave :
Taken off
,
April 22 April 29
SiR,-The chicken hatchery with which
I
am
concerned
keeps only such statistics as are essential for the business, but I think some observations on the proportion of pullets and cockerels hatched may be of interest. At the peak of the season we buy some 20,000 eggs a week from a dozen different breeders. Two-thirds of these produce saleable chicks, and our records for these are reasonably complete ; of the remaining one-third (the infertiles, dead in shell, weaklings killed off at once) our knowledge is fragmentary, though I believe the majority are cockerels. A further source of error is in sexing ; one-fifth of our chicks are sex-linked and there is no mistaking the golden pullet for the white cockerel. The bulk of the others are sexed at the rate of 16 a minute by a Japanese, who may be tempted at the end of a 12-hour day to put the doubtfuls in with the cockerels, most of which are done away with, but he achieves 98% accuracy with the pullets. It is normal, according to chick-sexers, to find in March and April a rise in the proportion of cockerels to pullets. This year, however, the rise has been uniquely high in our experience. Seeking the cause, one is tempted to attribute it to a combination of the exceptionally open winter, which produced a seasonally abnormal flow of eggs, and the very cold and snowbound conditions of the runs in the latter half of January. It proves how tired the birds were that our March supplies of eggs were something like 20% short of expectation. Fertility was normal ; hatchability, except for one breeder, also. It was the excess of cockerels that was so abnormal, and it seems almost certain to have had something to do with the tiredness of the parent stock. Take, for instance,
a mating that produces persistently and hatching, but good easily reared chicks. In other years the numbers of cockerels and pullets have been approximately equal. But in three successive weeks of this year these figures have appeared. The eggs are from six breeders.
poor
fertility
MATING
A/B. (LIGHT/HEAVY)
f
Pullets
Taken off trays
Eggs
Date
set
B
April 12 April 19 April 26
I
3024 3700 4535
!
I
I
894 1016 1276
Cockerels
fI
A/C.
Excess of cockerels
pullets
246 254 324
44 42 44
1140 1270 1600
(LIGHT/HEAVY)
Taken off trays
Eggs
Date
! April 22 April 29
set
3056 ’
3503
I
PulletsCoclierels ! 1155 1238
1109 1244
I. 5829
5394
Pullets 1540 Cockerels 1736 1647
1342
Total I 62 % 58 %
%of Excess of pullets cockerels 47
45
196 305
With cross E/C (light/heavy) for the same two weeks the number of eggs set was 3627 and 4201. The first yielded a total of 71% of which 51-3% were pullets, the second a total of 68% and the proportion of pullets
50.9%. One
might
conclude that the
hatch, but this is not
so.
pullet
is the harder to
First, the pullet is the easier
chick to rear ; secondly, to produce 100 cockerels of the best standard far more culling is necessary than for pullets ; and, thirdly, so far as one can judge, at least as many cockerels as pullets are left on the trays as sub. standard. It is my own belief that the missing pullets would not have been found in the unhatched eggs. An excess of males is, I suggest, a sign of something amiss with the parent stock : it is a sign of weakness and not of strength. To establish this would need far more accurate figures ; but as they stand the four crosses recorded fall into two groups-one in which pullets equal or exceed the cockerels, the other in which they fall substantially below. It seems clear that this correlates with the proportion of chicks taken off the trays: the worse the hatch, the lower the proportion of pullets. I suggest that the balance of sexes is not automatic but that considerable variation in the proportion can be caused by conditions previous to fertilisation, and that favourable conditions result in more females. A. HANBURY-SPARROW. Amersham, Bucks. CONSERVATISM " SiR,—The annotation on chemotherapy in orthopaedic tuberculosis in your issue of June 12 includes a sentence in which the word" conservatism " is used as a synonym for " non-employment of surgical attack." There is " common similar usage of conservatism " and " conservative " in this country as well. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines " conservative " as "moderate, cautious." Is not to operate, then, to dismiss moderation and caution ?’? Under some circumstances, yes ; under others, no. The same comment may be made in cases where operative therapy is done. May it not be" advisable to drop " conservative and " conservatism" from medical writings unless they are correctly used or defined’? "
"
% of
The above, yielding some 65%, is not a fecund cross. But mate A to another heavy breed, C, and the yield jumps to 75%. The eggs are from five breeders and here are the results for two weeks. MATING
-
set
,
-
VARIATIONS IN SEX-RATIO
trays
Eggs
Date
C. E. DENT.
London, S.W.3.
D/C. (LIGHT/HEAVY)
MATING
I
% of
I
Excess of
pulletscockerels 51 50
::
St. Joseph Hospital, Fort Wayne, Tndiana. Indiana.
S. M S S. M. M. BABSON. P RABSON.
PORPHYRIA TREATED WITH NEOSTIGMINE
SIR,—As Dr. Gillhespy and Mr. Smith quote in their July 10, Sveinsson, Rimington, and Barnes’
letter of
careful to say, " ... Uroporphyrin ill is extractable acetate from aqueous solution within the narrow range of pH 3-0-3-2, whereas the series I isomer is stated not to be so extractable." Dresel and Tooth,2 working in my laboratory, have now demonstrated that uroporphyrin i is as effectively extracted by ethyl acetate from buffered aqueous solution (20-250 µg.
were
by ethyl
Sveinsson, S. L., Rimington, C., Barnes, H. D. Scand. J. clin. Lab. Invest. 1949, 1, 2. 2. Dresel, E. I. B., Tooth, B. E. Nature, Lond. 1954 (in the press). 1.
Closer analysis of April 29 figures for this cross reveals that the least successful breeder, who produced only 70%, produced only 45% of pullets ; while the most successful, producing 83.5%, gave 52% pullets. With the cross D/C the proportion of cockerels rose for several weeks. Two successive batches gave :
Taken off
,
April 22 April 29
SiR,-The chicken hatchery with which
I
am
concerned
keeps only such statistics as are essential for the business, but I think some observations on the proportion of pullets and cockerels hatched may be of interest. At the peak of the season we buy some 20,000 eggs a week from a dozen different breeders. Two-thirds of these produce saleable chicks, and our records for these are reasonably complete ; of the remaining one-third (the infertiles, dead in shell, weaklings killed off at once) our knowledge is fragmentary, though I believe the majority are cockerels. A further source of error is in sexing ; one-fifth of our chicks are sex-linked and there is no mistaking the golden pullet for the white cockerel. The bulk of the others are sexed at the rate of 16 a minute by a Japanese, who may be tempted at the end of a 12-hour day to put the doubtfuls in with the cockerels, most of which are done away with, but he achieves 98% accuracy with the pullets. It is normal, according to chick-sexers, to find in March and April a rise in the proportion of cockerels to pullets. This year, however, the rise has been uniquely high in our experience. Seeking the cause, one is tempted to attribute it to a combination of the exceptionally open winter, which produced a seasonally abnormal flow of eggs, and the very cold and snowbound conditions of the runs in the latter half of January. It proves how tired the birds were that our March supplies of eggs were something like 20% short of expectation. Fertility was normal ; hatchability, except for one breeder, also. It was the excess of cockerels that was so abnormal, and it seems almost certain to have had something to do with the tiredness of the parent stock. Take, for instance,
a mating that produces persistently and hatching, but good easily reared chicks. In other years the numbers of cockerels and pullets have been approximately equal. But in three successive weeks of this year these figures have appeared. The eggs are from six breeders.
poor
fertility
MATING
A/B. (LIGHT/HEAVY)
f
Pullets
Taken off trays
Eggs
Date
set
B
April 12 April 19 April 26
I
3024 3700 4535
!
I
I
894 1016 1276
Cockerels
fI
A/C.
Excess of cockerels
pullets
246 254 324
44 42 44
1140 1270 1600
(LIGHT/HEAVY)
Taken off trays
Eggs
Date
! April 22 April 29
set
3056 ’
3503
I
PulletsCoclierels ! 1155 1238
1109 1244
I. 5829
5394
Pullets 1540 Cockerels 1736 1647
1342
Total I 62 % 58 %
%of Excess of pullets cockerels 47
45
196 305
With cross E/C (light/heavy) for the same two weeks the number of eggs set was 3627 and 4201. The first yielded a total of 71% of which 51-3% were pullets, the second a total of 68% and the proportion of pullets
50.9%. One
might
conclude that the
hatch, but this is not
so.
pullet
is the harder to
First, the pullet is the easier
chick to rear ; secondly, to produce 100 cockerels of the best standard far more culling is necessary than for pullets ; and, thirdly, so far as one can judge, at least as many cockerels as pullets are left on the trays as sub. standard. It is my own belief that the missing pullets would not have been found in the unhatched eggs. An excess of males is, I suggest, a sign of something amiss with the parent stock : it is a sign of weakness and not of strength. To establish this would need far more accurate figures ; but as they stand the four crosses recorded fall into two groups-one in which pullets equal or exceed the cockerels, the other in which they fall substantially below. It seems clear that this correlates with the proportion of chicks taken off the trays: the worse the hatch, the lower the proportion of pullets. I suggest that the balance of sexes is not automatic but that considerable variation in the proportion can be caused by conditions previous to fertilisation, and that favourable conditions result in more females. A. HANBURY-SPARROW. Amersham, Bucks. CONSERVATISM " SiR,—The annotation on chemotherapy in orthopaedic tuberculosis in your issue of June 12 includes a sentence in which the word" conservatism " is used as a synonym for " non-employment of surgical attack." There is " common similar usage of conservatism " and " conservative " in this country as well. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines " conservative " as "moderate, cautious." Is not to operate, then, to dismiss moderation and caution ?’? Under some circumstances, yes ; under others, no. The same comment may be made in cases where operative therapy is done. May it not be" advisable to drop " conservative and " conservatism" from medical writings unless they are correctly used or defined’? "
"
% of
The above, yielding some 65%, is not a fecund cross. But mate A to another heavy breed, C, and the yield jumps to 75%. The eggs are from five breeders and here are the results for two weeks. MATING
-
set
,
-
VARIATIONS IN SEX-RATIO
trays
Eggs
Date
C. E. DENT.
London, S.W.3.
D/C. (LIGHT/HEAVY)
MATING
I
% of
I
Excess of
pulletscockerels 51 50
::
St. Joseph Hospital, Fort Wayne, Tndiana. Indiana.
S. M S S. M. M. BABSON. P RABSON.
PORPHYRIA TREATED WITH NEOSTIGMINE
SIR,—As Dr. Gillhespy and Mr. Smith quote in their July 10, Sveinsson, Rimington, and Barnes’
letter of
careful to say, " ... Uroporphyrin ill is extractable acetate from aqueous solution within the narrow range of pH 3-0-3-2, whereas the series I isomer is stated not to be so extractable." Dresel and Tooth,2 working in my laboratory, have now demonstrated that uroporphyrin i is as effectively extracted by ethyl acetate from buffered aqueous solution (20-250 µg.
were
by ethyl
Sveinsson, S. L., Rimington, C., Barnes, H. D. Scand. J. clin. Lab. Invest. 1949, 1, 2. 2. Dresel, E. I. B., Tooth, B. E. Nature, Lond. 1954 (in the press). 1.