melanicadj.n.

1822 tr. G. Breschet in London Med. & Physical Jrnl. 47 157 What are the changes that take place in the tissue in which the melanic matter is secreted?

1847–9 Todd's Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. IV. i. 116/1 Melanic pigment is essentially composed of extremely minute granules.

1853 R. Dunglison Med. Lexicon (ed. 9) Melanic, of or belonging to Melanosis;—as Melanic deposit, a black colouring matter deposited from the blood under special circumstances.

1907 Science 1 Nov. 590/1 Brown eyes..contain melanic pigment.

1962 Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 26 233/1 Tyrosinase is lacking in the skin of albino animals, but beyond this there appears to be no correspondence between tyrosinase activity and the degree of melanic pigmentation.

1965 B. E. Freeman tr. A. Vandel Biospeleol. xxv. 407 True cavernicoles are usually without melanic pigments.

1973 Sci. Amer. Oct. 128/2 Albinism is usually the result of an inborn lack of the enzyme; the albino possesses normal melanic granules.

1996 Res. Microbiol. 147 172/2 The pigment produced by P. mirabilis from tyrosine is melanic in nature.

1826 J. C. Prichard Res. Physical Hist. Mankind (ed. 2) I. 139 These three varieties are the melanic, including all individuals or races who have black hair; the xanthous,..; and the albino.

1829 T. Price Ess. Physiogn. & Physiol. Inhab. Brit. 109 Whether I should attribute the few melanic countenances, I noticed in the South of Ireland, to a Spanish origin.

1872 Jrnl. Anthropol. Inst. 1 272 Mr. J. W. Jackson's memoir..supposes that the Turanian element is common to both the Melanic and the Xanthous varieties of man in Western Europe.

1914 W. N. P. Barbellion Jrnl. 12 Dec. (1919) 160 The face of Sir Henry Wood strikes me as very much like the traditional picture of Jesus Christ, tho' Sir Henry is dark—the melanic Messiah I call him.

1993 G. Bear Moving Mars 319 The UMS thinker, Marshall, installed two years before, projected an image of a proper Martian university professor, male, melanic, perhaps twenty-five years old, distinguished by peppery spots in his hair.

1882–4 Yarrell's Brit. Birds (ed. 4) III. 665 The melanic varieties occasionally found in our northern Skua.

1894 Naturalist 333 A melanic form of the Pipistrelle.

1903 Daily Chron. 30 Dec. 3/3 The melanic variety of the common leopard.

1915 R. C. Punnett Mimicry in Butterflies viii. 101 In some parts of England the common peppered moth, Amphidasys betularia, has been almost entirely supplanted by the darker melanic form doubledayaria.

1940 H. B. Cott Adaptive Coloration in Animals i. i. 17 The distribution of such melanic varieties, coinciding as it often does with industrialism, is very significant. So is the fact that the melanic forms have not..become established, even though they are present, in rural districts.

1970 Nature 12 Sept. 1155/1 The murk of nineteenth century Manchester fostered the melanic form carbonaria of the peppered moth, Biston betularia (L.).

1991 Country-side Spring 11/1 Some female 2 spots [sc. ladybirds] prefer to mate with melanic rather than typical males, irrespective of the female's own colour pattern.

1920 Jrnl. Genetics 10 70 The cross between homozygous melanics on the one side, and similar heterozygotes on the other, should yield only melanics.

1958 New Scientist 3 July 298/2 New theories were evoked to account for the rapid spread of species [of moths] changing from light coloration to black—the ‘industrial melanics’.

1979 Nature 29 Mar. 491/3 The black phases are industrial melanics, the only known instance of that condition in a species protected from predation by a powerfully unpleasant scent and taste.

1996 Jrnl. Insect Behavior 9 550 It is also possible..that a female mating preference may be at least partly responsible for the high frequency of melanics.