Science: Light on Sex

Even schoolboys know that birds mate in the spring, but even a bright schoolboy could hardly tell why. Biologist James C. Perry of Cincinnati's Xavier University, no schoolboy by a long shot, was convinced last week that it is not so much the flowers that bloom in the spring as what birds eat that affects their mating cycle. Other investigators had advanced the theory that increased exposure to sunlight in the spring is the sex stimulus. This theory they checked experimentally by inducing sex gland activity with artificial illumination. It looked as if the light stimulated the front lobe of...

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