FRILLS AND FUNDAMENTAL BARS AS PLUMAGE CHARACTERS. 151 



Temminck calls this race 13 the "Coq a plumes frisees," and states that the 

 prevailing color of the race is "white." He quotes Mr. Hewitt, who says "all 

 body-feathers, without exception, appear twisted similarly to the curled feathers 

 in the tail of a drake." These birds are spoken of as a rather "weak" race liable 

 to disease, poor layers, and generally thin. 



Tegetmeier made an interesting cross of the silky and frizzled breeds. He 

 obtained as hybrids, "white frizzled negro fowls conjoining the dark leaden skin 

 of the silky with the white recurved feather of the frizzled variety" (page 272). 



Davenport 14 has recently repeated this cross with like results. Frizzling, accord- 

 ing to this author, seems to be a Mendelian "dominant," and "the frizzled charac- 

 teristics a typical sport" (page 56). The further statement that "curving of shaft, 

 barb-length, and barb-form are all correlated in the first generation" is of interest. 



Geese. 



In the Sebastopol geese the feathers are very long and curled and twisted. 

 According to Tegetmeier (page 366), " the shafts of these long feathers split down their 

 entire length, and then become twisted, so as to give rise to the peculiar curled 

 appearance." 



Bullfinch." 



Buffon I6 figured and described a peculiar bird under the name "Bouvreuil a 

 plumes frisees du Bresil." It is said that "the lower part of the body is white, 

 the feathers of the abdomen and under coverts of the tail are 'curled' in some 17 

 individuals." 



FRILLED FEATHERS AS A CHARACTER OF GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT RATHER THAN SALTATIVE. 



If a character represents a unit whole from the first — i.e., if it is not reached or 

 reachable through continuous variation advancing cumulatively from generation 

 to generation, if it be as fixed as a chemical molecule, then if it disappears it should 

 go as suddenly and abruptly as it came. Yet it is well known that characters often 

 disappear by degrees, not all at once. In crossing species we rarely find the hybrid 

 with pure characters. A character may be halved, quartered, etc., to any fractional 

 part of the original. 18 



Minute frills may occur in one or two feathers only, and they may occur in any 

 number, or in all of the feathers. They may be so minute as to escape attention, 

 and every stage in size and number may occur. It is not, then, comparable to a 

 chemical body of a "precise" and "constant" make-up. 



The full character is reached, not by a jump, but through a process of modifi- 

 cation, carried farther and farther, from the initial starting-point. This starting- 

 point presupposes the normal feather with all its elements intact as [the foundation 

 on which the variation can begin, and from which it can gradually be molded into 

 its ultimate shape. 



"Inheritance in Poultry, Cam. Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 52, 1906. 



15 Frizzled canaries are said to have been exhibited. 



16 See Buffon, Ois, text, Vol. XIX, page 3S9. 



"The word "some" is here used because Buffon regards thiB bird as identical with Brisson's Pyrrhula africana 

 nigra minor (which has no sign of frilled feathers). Buffon is doubtful about the habitat, which was reported to be 

 Brazil. 



18 See Vol. II, Chap. XVII. 

 11 



