56 MAYNIE R. CURTIS. 



the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. The poultrymen 

 have been under instructions to bring all abnormal eggs to the 

 laboratory where they are opened. It seems hardly probable 

 that they would fail to observe the abnormal size of a triple- 

 yolked egg. During the six years more than three thousand 

 different adult birds have been kept, each for one or more years. 

 If no triple-yolked eggs have escaped notice, fewer that one bird in 

 a thousand have laid triple-yolked eggs. 



Each of the three triple-yolked eggs produced in these flocks 

 was laid by a different bird. In each case the triple-yolked egg 

 was one of the first six eggs produced by a pullet which began 

 to lay when between five and six months old. This indicates 

 that young pullets are more likely to produce this type of abnor- 

 mal egg than are older birds. Fowls show also a greater tendency 

 to lay double-yolked eggs at this age than when more mature. 

 At this stage of development the time of successive ovulations 

 is less precisely regulated than later in life. It should be kept 

 in mind, however, that even at this age there are many more 

 birds which do not lay multiple-yolked eggs than there are which 

 do, and that usually one bird lays only one such egg. 



Data collected during two investigations in the physiology 

 of egg production show incidentally what percentage of the 

 pullets which began to lay when between five and seven months 

 of age produce eggs with more than one yolk. The first of these 

 observations was made in the fall of 1910. At that time data 

 were taken on all the eggs laid by a small flock of pullets. 

 Twenty of these pullets began to lay when under seven months 

 of age. Among the first ten eggs of four (or 20 per cent.) of 

 these there was one or more which was double-yolked. The 

 second observation was made in the fall of 1913 when one hundred 

 and sixty-nine pullets laid before November I. All of these 

 were less than seven months old. Thirty-three of them or 

 J 9-5 P er cent, laid one or more eggs with more than one yolk. 

 The data on the laying of multiple-yolked eggs by these two 

 flocks of pullets are brought together in Table I. 



This table shows that in 80 per cent, of the birds of this age 

 the normal rhythm of ovulation, and the successive stages of 

 egg formation which result in the enclosing of each yolk in 



