February 24, 1996.

Dear Mr Plant,

Many, many apologies for not replying immediately to your generous package with very valuable gift books of November 11th and kind letter of February 8th. They reached me safely but some events of my life got in the way to do it. This connects with both the whole situation within Ukraine and Russia, and in my personal fate.

In January I was in holiday without pay in Nizhny Novgorod where my parents live and whence I came back to Borky on January 31. I was able to watch deterioration of life conditions in Russia because of complicated economic and political situation, because of military operations in Chechnya and Daghestan. But I dare say that current economic and political situation in Ukraine is much worse. As well as in Russia, people at enterprises and institutions receive their salaries with delay several months later. Bank accounts are empty. Many enterprises and institutions owe the state great amounts of money and close down or send their employees to permanent holiday without pay. I read an official forecast of West-European experts for 1996 that Ukraine will be affected this year by the most severe falling-off of production and inflation in comparison with other countries of the former USSR. We have no future. We do not know what to wait for from both Russian and Ukrainian leaders. We are afraid of possible beginning of second Chechnya in any other region including the disputable Crimea. And all this is also attributed to our Institute in Borky and myself. During three last months there is a bad practice in Borky to disconnect electric power for one or more hours two or three times every day for the purpose of economy drive. As to my salary, in January I received for December only 6,000,000 karbovanets (or 30 USD) but paid them as debts to my friends. As for level of prices, for example, 1 kg of butter costs 1,000,000 karbovanets (5 USD), a dozen of eggs 300,000 karbovanets (1.5 USD) and so on.

So you see how the life is treating me and what a hopeless position I am experiencing at the moment. I do not see any way out. I do not know how I shall continue my work here and earn my living. I do not even have money for postal expenses to write to my friends all over the world, co-operate with them, make xerocopies for them and so on.

Only few buoyant feelings are visiting me and consoling my soul now. Of course, these are love and sympathy of my parents and son who lives apart me with my former wife. Let me express many, many thanks to you for all your assistance and sympathy for me. I am most glad to have such good friends and to know such outstanding persons as you and Dr Elio Corti are. I never forget all your best you and Dr Corti are doing for me. And I hope we will meet each other in May in Italy because Dr Corti invited me, too.

Underneath you can read some of my comments to your interesting books.

Page 21 of your Supplement to Part 2 of The Origin Evolution..., 1985: Errata in writing the genus name, Phasianus instead of Phasianaus, Phaninaus and Phasinaus given in the text.

Page 22 and 23: You mentioned the Early Cretaceous including Ambioriiformes Kurochkin, 1982 and the avian evolution chain. To this I can add that Dr Kurochkin lives and works in Moscow. In the proceedings of the XXI International Ornithological Congress, Vienna, August 20-25, 1994, I have found some interesting articles including Kurochkin’s one:

Larry D. Martin (Natural History Museum and Dept. of Systematics and Ecology, Univ. Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA) - A New Skeletal Model of Archaeopteryx

Walter J. Bock (Dept. of Biological Sciences, Columbia Univ., New York, NY 10027, USA) & Paul Buhler (Brandhof 15, D-74417 Gschwend, Germany) - Evolution of Feathers and Flight in Birds

Sankar Chatterjee (Museum of Texas Tech Univ., MS/Box 43191, Lubbock, Texas 79409-3191, USA) - Protoavis from the Triassic of Texas: The Oldest Bird

Andrzej Elzanowski (M-P-I. f. Biochemie, D-82152 Martinsried, Germany) & Peter Wellnhofer (Bayerische Staatssammlung. f. Palaeont. und hist. Geologie, D-80333 Munchen, Germany) - Cranial Morphology of Archaeopteryx: Evidence from the Seventh Skeleton

Evgeny N. Kurochkin (Palaeontological Institute, Profsoyuznaya St. 123, Moscow 117647, Russia) - Synopsis and Evolution of Mesozoic Birds

Erich Weber (Spezielle Zoologie, Eberhard-Karls-Universitat, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, D-7400 Tubingen, Germany) & Angelika Hesse (Museum fur Naturkunde und Vorgeschichte, Askanische Str. 32, D-4500 Dessau, Germany) - The Systematic Position of Aptornis, a Flightless Subfossil Bird from New Zealand

Zhou Zhonge (Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, Academia Sinica, China) - The Relationship of Archaeopteryx to Early Cretaceous Birds in China

I will try to copy these articles for you when I can. Maybe, you would like to write to some of these scholars.

Part 3 of The Origin Evolution..., 1986, pages 40, 41 and 45:

Hutt and you assume that Gallus sonnerati could be involved in the origin of the domestic fowl, G. domesticus, on the base of a fact of gene S (silver) presence in the both genotypes. However my suggestion is that gene S might appear in G. domesticus as a homological mutation since there is a known biologic law of homological variation discovered by the famous Russian geneticist V.I. Vavilov (1920) that variation including mutations in the close biologic species is similar.

Page 55: There is nothing of surprise that in the crossing between Black Pekin (Cochin) and Light Sussex about 12% of the offspring resulting from the F2 resembled Light Brahma both in shape and colour - this corresponds to the Mendelian law of heredity. As to “missing” peacomb of the Brahma it cannot emerge in any way because both initial parent breeds, Pekin and Sussex, have the single comb genotype, r+/r+ p+/p+.

Page 63: Perhaps you read in Tegetmeir’s “The Poultry Book” (1873) that about 1845  large  fowls were imported to Europe from China that were called Cochin China and Brahma but these names were, to Tegetmeir's mind, less correct than the other one, Shanghai.

Page 74: Re diversity of chicken breeds as a result of involving several wild varieties, I can again remind the Vavilov’s homological variation law. On the other hand, we know about much more pronounced diversity of pigeon breeds having the very fanciful exterior characters that are absent in the wild ancestor, Columba livia, including leg feathering, frizzling (as in chickens!) and so on. And these characters were the result of artificial selection of mutations!

Page 79: In the case of blue egg sell colour we can face the same homological variation as the similar colourations were also intrinsic in pheasants. I refer to an article of Martin Silverudd, Deep Lake Gene Bank, S-570 82 Malilla, Sweden in the Proceedings of the 17th World’s Poultry Congress, Helsinki, 1984, pages 711-712:

The existence of hens laying blue eggs was first brought to the general notice of the poultry world by Prof. Salvador Castellò Carreras during meeting of the First World’s Poultry Congress at The Hague in 1921 (1). None of the wild species of GALLUS lays an egg which can be supposed to contain the gene for blue egg shell (O). It is well known that hybrids can be readily obtained between the pheasant and the domestic fowl, but hitherto such hybrids have proved to be sterile (1). It cannot, however, be said that the matter has been fully explored, and it is conceivable that at some time or other fertile offspring may have been produced (1).

Punnett (1) noted that polychromatism in the fowls’ and pheasants’ eggs follows apparently similar lines (white and blue, light brown and green, dark brown and olive, respectively). The green or olive egg shell colour depends on the interaction between O and for brown egg shell.

In Sweden we have had birds laying green eggs since 1956.

O is dominant. That means, for instance, that in a cross involving three strains (one male strain, and two female strains), we may introduce O to the male strain only, for getting a hybrid laying green eggs. Birds carrying O give egg shells coloured all through, different from the brown egg shell, that have the pigment confined to the outer surface of the shell. Green and olive eggs have a blue inner side of the shell. O gives an equable colouring effect, opposite to some genes for brown eggs, which give spotted shell and other variations. Variations in the green colour (such as brown spotted etc.) depends on genes for brown.

The original hens of Costa Rica lay an egg of an absolutely brilliant green colour (1).

(Reference: 1. Punnett, R.C., 1933. Genetic studies in poultry. IX. The blue egg. Journal of Genetics, Vol. XXVII, No. 3: 465-470.)

Page 84: As it follows from Hutt (1949), the genes for silver (S), extended black plumage (E) and yellow shank colour (Id) were taken from other wild jungle fowl species but again what’s about the homological variation in the close Gallus species? And what is more, on page 85 there is still a Hutt’s notice about considerable role of mutations!

Pages 86 and 90: The Tegetmeir’s statements concerning great diversity of animals and their increased variation under domestication as well as the role of artificial selection are worth to attract attention with regard to the problem of origin and evolution of the domestic fowl.

Please forgive me for some criticisms regarding polyphyletic theory but it seems to me that we should take them into consideration when discussing this problem.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any information or assistance.

Anticipating the meeting with you in Italy.

Kind regards and best wishes for the New Year.

Yours very faithfully,