154 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Orpington varieties of England, are all influenced by the supe- 

 rior power of the Asiatic blood. Ever\' one of these produces 

 a brown shelled egg. You cannot bring together two separate 

 breeds or varieties of poultry and intermingle the blood with- 

 out changing three things, the form, size and shape of the egg. 

 Whenever you produce a cross from pairing together anv two 

 breeds you have interfered with the regular line of product, 

 and therefrom come the countless numbers of ill-formed and 

 misshapen eggs. Mr. Tillinghast told you that he preferred 

 the White Leghorns because the White Leghorn egg went 

 into the New York market at the highest price. It is a white 

 shelled egg. \\'hy does the white shelled egg go into the New 

 York market at the highest price? Because they are all white 

 and all of regular size. Nothing but European fowls will pro- 

 duce such eggs. You cannot violate the laws of nature to 

 any great extent in crossing without showing the effect upon 

 the egg. By the time you have influenced size and form, you 

 will find you can get neither the clear brown nor the clear 

 white egg. It is the clear, bright, white-looking egg that the 

 New York market wants. If there is anything in the world 

 that caters to the taste of the New Yorker, it is appearance. 

 There is no place in the world where so much stress is laid upon 

 appearance as in Xew York and they want these beautiful 

 white shelled eggs. But you can leave Xew York in the 

 morning, after having had white shelled eggs for breakfast, 

 and go from there to Boston, and there everything is brown. 

 You could not hire them to introduce anything else but the 

 brown shell. If people would be as particular in taking care 

 of their poultry* as they are to get the doctor for the horse, 

 when he is sick, they would succeed better in the business. 



Mixed hens lay mixed eggs, and when you go into the mar- 

 ket with them, you get from sixteen to nineteen cents a dozen, 

 while Brother Tillinghast may go into the market and find 

 plent>' to take his at forty-two cents. What is the meaning of 

 that? He keeps his Leghorns pure. He can get fort\--two 

 cents a dozen for the best white shelled breakfast eggs, and 

 these other mixed eggs sell at from sixteen to nineteen cents 

 in any commission house down-town. Suppose you have five 

 hundred mixed hens. My advice is to go home and sell those 

 five hundred mixed hens in the market for what you can get 

 for them. As far as possible handle only pure bred fowls 



