2<),S RAYMOND PHARL. 



West Indies and I'nited States it had been preserved and bred 

 so long as to be of a very fixed type indeed, though even in these 

 fowls there was a constant tendency for white or black feathers 

 of the original components to appear, as well as the straw or 

 red which always troubles breeders of white or black fowls.' 



"This is the statement of a fancier, made without special 

 study of the inheritance of barring. It is certainly correct in 

 the statement that the barring has become firmly fixed in the 

 Plymouth Rock at least. Such a thing as a completely non- 

 barred bird appearing in any 'pure bred' strain of Barred Ply- 

 mouth Rocks no longer occurs and has not for a number of years. 

 The statement that the barred pattern originated from a cross 

 between black and white birds, as a sort of intermediate condition, 

 is, we feel certain, a mistake. The barring is a perfectly definite 

 pattern, not simply a mixture of black and white, or a 'splashed' 

 coloration such as is seen in Houdans. The inheritance of barring 

 is of such character as to indicate most strongly that we have to 

 deal here with a unit character, viz., a particular definite and 

 characteristic pattern. Further, so far as we are aware, none 

 of the experiments regarding the inheritance of color in poultry 

 carried out by Bateson, Punnett, Hurst, Davenport 1 or the present 

 writers give the slightest evidence that breeding black and white 

 birds together will produce barred offspring. Finally, in the 

 case of the Plymouth Rocks, where this pattern reaches its most 

 perfect expression, the known history of the breed makes it 

 certain that the barring was not created de noro, but wa^ taken 

 from the Dominique." 



Since this was written I have found in the literature an ink-r- 

 esting piece of definite circumstantial evidence regarding the 

 appearance of the barred pattern in the offspring of a solid Mack 

 and solid white bird mated together. This would seem at fn>i 

 glance to be clear proof for the <lc novo origin <! the pattern. As 

 such it is worth discussing. The case in point concern^ the 



1 It should have been stated that Davenport (Carnegie Institution, I'ublicat i"ii 

 52. p. 40) has reported bam-d nit -pi inj; tmm crossing a White I.eghoi n liantam cf 

 with a Black Cochin bantam v. lli- H-MIIH from pure matings, however, show 

 plainly, as he himself states (lot. /:!., p. \ and p. 75). that the White Leghorn 

 stock used carried tin- leaned pattern factor. Tlii- case then evidently has no 

 critical bearing on the point under di-i u--ion here. 



