INHERITANCE IN POULTRY. 



be found of exactly the same color ; some are a chestnut color, others darker, 

 and some quite light " (McGrew, 1901, p. 527). Of the Buff Cochins as 

 first imported to England, Wright (1902, p. 245) says: " The buff colors 

 were much subdivided, ranging from the lightest silver buff and silver cin- 

 namons through lemons and buffs to the deep colored cinnamons which 

 would now be called almost red. Originally, also, the birds were not 

 uniformly buff over the whole body ; even prize-winners were such as would 

 now be called ' tricolored,' the breast being lemon or orange buff, the 

 hackles and saddle much darker, and the wing darker still, even a red." 

 From all of this it is plain that buff is only a diluted form of red a color 

 that is abundant in the plumage of the Malay and Indian breeds, and the 

 replacement of all black by this buff is probably due, originally, to a xanthic 



"sport." 



MATERIAL. 



The mother was the White Leghorn Bantam No. 128, a heterogametous 

 bird, already discussed at page 40. The /#///;<?/' was a Buff Cochin Bantam, 

 No. 545 (fig. 28), original stock, of whose ancestry nothing is known. 



RESULTS. 



i. GENERAL PLUMAGE COLOR. Thirty-one offspring show the following 

 distribution of color : White, 9 ; white and buff, 9 ; white and black, 4 ; 

 white, black, and buff, 2 ; black and buff, 4 ; black ("all juvenile), 3. 



Calling the germ cells of the mother equally white and white-and-black 

 and regarding the buff as (imperfectly) recessive when paired with white, 

 we have 



Of the white and buff heterozygotes, white only appears in 9 ; the remainder 

 show some buff. White is dominant, but imperfectly so.* 



Wright (1902, p. 244) states in regard to crosses between white and buff 

 Cochins that iti the early days they "bred most amazingly in regard to 

 color. . . . From one brood of ten chickens of this cross two pullets were 

 pure black ; two pullets and three cockerels black with more or less gold in 

 the hackles, and marked wings ; the other three darkly penciled birds." 



Hurst (1905, p. 134) finds that crosses between White Leghorn female 

 and Buff Cochin male (essentially the same crosses as mine) gave 60 chicks 



But see fuller discussion of the heterozygous nature of rny White Leghorns, page 40. 



