FRIZZLE AND SILKY. 55 



feathers are much reduced from the Brahma type, and in one or two cases it 

 is doubtful if they are present. We have to do here either with a blending 

 characteristic or else a very imperfect dominance of the vulture hock. 



12. FOOT FEATHERING. This is always present in the hybrids, but is 

 usually less heavy than in the Dark Brahma (fig. 40). Booting is dominant, 

 but is imperfectly so. 



13. TAIL FEATHERS. As none of the hybrids are over six months old, it 

 is impossible to report fully on the inheritance of this characteristic. While 

 in some male hybrids the tail feathers already surpass in length the middle 

 tail feathers of the adult Brahma parent and are still growing, in no case 

 have they made the extraordinary growth of the Tosa fowl. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



METHOD OF INHERITANCE. The color characteristic of shafting and 

 penciling in the female, and body lacing, red wing bar, and white wing bow 

 in the male, appear to dominate in the respective sexes ; but dominance, if 

 such it is, is always imperfect, in that traces of the opposite allelomorph are 

 sometimes found. Furthermore : 



Red eye color dominates over yellow (not always perfectly). 



Booting is dominant over clean leg. 



Earlobe color is something of a mixture. 



Vulture hock is sometimes very imperfectly " dominant." 



The length of tail feathers is perhaps a blend. 



SEX IN INHERITANCE. For the most part a sexually dimorphic charac- 

 teristic is inherited only by the proper sex. In the hybrids of this series, 

 however, shafting seems to have been partially transferred from the female 

 to some males. Most peculiar is the inheritance of foot color, where all the 

 female hybrids show the willow foot of their father, and all male hybrids 

 the yellow foot of their mother. 



Series XI. Frizzle and Silky. 

 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM. 



This series of crossings was made to learn the inheritance of the allelo- 

 morphs given below. 



THE RACES AS A WHOLE. 



The origin of the Frizzle fowl (figs. 41 and 42) is not definitely known. 

 Darwin (1876, Chapter VII) states that they are not uncommon in India, 

 and Temrninck states that they are domesticated also in Java, Sumatra, and 

 all the Philippine Islands, being prevailingly white. They must have been 

 brought to Europe early, since they are described by Aldrovandus in 1645 

 from a specimen sent him from Parma. Willoughby, in his Ornithology 

 (1676), says that he had seen them in England. The recurving of feathers 

 is found in many species of birds. It usually occurs on the neck, where it 

 forms a ruff ; more rarely over the entire body. Frizzled canary birds are 



