No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 307 



down iu mine and everybody else's estimation by the sort of mon- 

 grel chickens they have on their farms. I am very glad he has 

 said this and a great many other things, and I hope that we ag- 

 ricultural workers will go home and be a nucleus in our own 

 neighborhood and will set an example and that we ourselves will 

 not have hatched mongrel chickens and will not kill the early 

 moulters and things like that. 



This morning I am going to try to tell you which is the best 

 chicken. Those of you who heard me talk know that I have always 

 evaded that question, for a good many reasons, First of all, per- 

 haps, because of my position as a worker, knowing the prejudices 

 a great many people have on a particular question. As an officer 

 of the American Poultry Association, I have tried to be as loyal 

 to their standard as I could. I have evaded the question perhaps, 

 because 1 am a licensed poultry killer and because I am manager 

 of one of the largest poultry shows in America. But this morning 

 I am going to try and forget all that, and directly and individually, 

 as I feel to-day, tell which is the best chicken or which isS the best 

 variety of poultry to keep; or, rather, I am going to try to help 

 you so that you can tell which is the best. 



Now we are going to show some slides, not very many. The pro- 

 gram says "Forty Varieties of Poultry." I'm going to tell you, 

 "Forty Varieties" came about something like this: Several years 

 back the American Poultry Association for the first time voted 

 quite a large sura of money that the different forty most popular 

 varieties of poultry might be shown in lantern slides. It seemed 

 to be very hard to find some firm that could make those pictures. 

 Then the cry went up as to which were to be the forty. So a 

 little later the American Poultry Association decided that all the 

 standard varieties, something over a hundred, were to be shown like 

 this. At last they are ready to do this. We have tried all the 

 big slide makers of the United States, and you are going to see 

 on the screen here this morning slides made by Williams, Brown 

 and Earle, of Philadelphia and the Horace MacFarland Co., of 

 Harrisburg. You are going to see some slides made by firms in 

 Chicago, Boston and New York, and this is the very best they 

 could do. I am sorry to say they are not up to type; in other 

 words, the new standard, the 1915 standard, containing the illus- 

 trations of the very latest types of chickens is not out, and on 

 account of the copyright law, we cannot show the newer type un- 

 til the book itself is in circulation; but we will be ready to do 

 that by the time of the World's Fair in November — I mean the 

 poultry show in November, and they will be shown there for the 

 first time. 



These pictures I am showing here this morning are samples. 

 There are going to be two kinds of chickens here; you had a hint 

 that there are going to be two kinds of Barred Rock. I am going 

 to show, first of all, the standard types, the type that the chicken 

 fancier is trying to get, the type that is winning in the show room, 

 not only the' type but the color, and here we have the most popular 

 chicken in America so far as the farmer is concerned, or at least 

 the chicken that was the most popular chicken on the farms of Penn- 

 sylvania, the Barred Plymouth Rock. The fancier of Barred Ply- 

 mouth Rock has had one thing in view, to get a peculiar shade 

 of color and have his male and female alike in color; if you will 



