In Pursuit of the Gene

MENDEL WARS © 137
the recessive. In conformity with Mendelian expectations, Hurst did not
find a single chestnut foal among 370 progeny of pure-breeding bay or
brown sires. Furthermore bay and brown heterozygotes (that is, studs that
themselves were the cross of brown and chestnut parents) produced very
close to half chestnut and half bay and brown progeny (355:347) when
mated to chestnut mares. The foals of chestnut mated to chestnut were
more than 99 percent chestnut (1,095 of 1,104 chestnuts). Less than 1 percent
were exceptions, which he attributed to breeders’ or printers’ errors. 54
“I think the horse paper a very remarkable piece of work and I am proud to
communicate it,” Bateson wrote on November 1. 55
Hurst’s paper was scheduled to be read at the Royal Society on Thursday,
December 7, at 4:30 p.m. In the days preceding the climactic event,
Bateson sent a flurry of cards and letters with last-minute suggestions and
ideas. The day before the meeting, Bateson suggested that he and Hurst
meet at the Austro-Hungarian Café at 1:15 and leave from there for the
Royal Society. When he arrived, Hurst found Bateson in a state of high nervous
excitement over the upcoming battle, and suggested that they order a
bottle of champagne. 56 This idea horrified Bateson, who was in no mood for
celebration or levity of any kind. After lunch, the two men hailed a hansom
cab, which was drawn by a chestnut horse. As the two men climbed
into the seats, which were located in front of the driver directly behind the
horse, Bateson noticed that its tail was exceptionally dark, a darker shade
than he had ever before encountered in a chestnut. Hurst explained that
the horse was in fact a very dark form known as a liver chestnut, which had
a “chocolate” colored tail, but Bateson, who had never seen such a horse
before and was convinced that the tail was black like the tail of the bay,
grew increasingly agitated. When the ride was over, Bateson prevailed on
the cab driver to give him a sample of tail hairs to bring back to Miss Durham
for analysis.
Once the meeting was under way, Bateson managed to get through the
reading of his first paper, which documented the newly described phenomenon
of “gametic coupling,” a principle that would turn out to be of immense
importance. The paper was a joint one with Saunders and Punnett,
who were seated in the audience. Hurst was last on the program, and as