BREEDING BARRED ROCKS. 



305 



produce as the result, on a wide average of 

 cases, more or less of blacks, whites, mottles 

 or splashes with the plumage of Houdans and 



Anconas, blues or blue duns like that 

 Difficulties of blue Langshans and Andalusians, 

 Breeding. ^"'^ ^^at bluish barred plumage 



known as Dominique in America 

 and cuckoo in England. When once produced, 

 this last colour has however a strong tendency 

 to permanence ; and in the common native 

 Dominique fowl of the West Indies and United 

 States it had been preserved and bred so long 

 as to be of a very fixed type indeed, though 

 even in these fowls there was a constant 

 tendency for the white or black feathers of the 

 original components to appear, as well as the 

 straw or red which always troubles breeders of 

 white or black fowls. But in the barred Rocks, 

 fresh blood of both white and black had been 

 thrown in ; and in the Black Java particularly, 

 which all accounts agree in stating had been 

 always used on the female side, a strain had 

 been used which we have already seen is 

 perhaps one of the most strong and prepotent 

 now in existence. To this day that strong 

 black blood is constantly cropping up in barred 

 Rocks, black sports continually occurring to an 

 extent not known in any other blue barred fowl. 

 These are almost always on the female side, 

 though black feathers will also often appear in 

 the male, which is however more subject to 

 white than to black in his plumage. These 

 facts are explained by the origin of the fowl, 

 which, when well understood, affords valuable 

 indication to the breeder as to his choice in 

 certain cases. 



The general characteristics of the Plymouth 

 Rock are very much what might be expected 

 from its origin. It is a large fowl, only 

 slightly inferior in size to the 

 Characteristics large Asiatic breeds. The comb 

 Plymouth Rocks, 's single and straight, evenly 

 serrated, much like a good Cochin 

 comb, but preferred rather smaller, with wattles 

 large in proportion ; ear-lobes smaller, and red. 

 The head and neck are carried upright, and 

 not forward like the Cochin's. The body should 

 be large and rather square, but with a deep and 

 compact appearance, and the plumage close, 

 with only very moderate fluff ; wings moderate 

 in length and carried close. The shanks should 

 be moderate in length, not long nor yet too 

 short, and set wide apart ; they are clean, and 

 bright yellow in colour. The cock's tail should 

 be neat, and carried only moderately high, and 

 well compacted ; but we never could under- 

 stand the original Standard, which said it 

 was " smaller " than a Cochin's, as even in 



England, where the ideal differs widely from 

 the American, we have never seen a bird without 

 a tail much larger and higher than any Cochin 

 breeder would recognise as at all proper in his 

 variety. The tail of the hen, though small, is 

 also considerably larger and more projecting 

 than that of a Cochin. 



The plumage is not easy to describe with 

 exactness, and we have known two observers, 

 both accustomed to consider their words, de- 

 scribe the same bird, and the verj 

 B^^°' same feather from the same bird, 

 Rockl differently, and in each case rather 



differently from our own idea as 

 to its real colour. It is not so in regard to the 

 barring ; that runs straight across the feather, 

 much like that of a pencilled Hamburgh, but con- 

 siderably coarser ; also the bars are not sharply 

 edged, but the dark bar shades into the light 

 through a small space, though they should not do 

 so too gradually, or so as to destroy the distinctly 

 "barred" effect. From about 1890 the bars 

 have been bred perceptibly narrower and more 

 numerous than formerly, though not so much 

 so in England as in America ; there is pretty 

 obviously a happy medium, unless some 

 day a fashion should set in for breeding an 

 out-and-out " blue-pencilled " fowl ; and beyond 

 a certain point narrowness is not desired in 

 either country. There is also a proper pro- 

 portion between the dark bars and the light 

 spaces, not very different from equal spacing 

 being desired. 



The real difficulty, no doubt, is how to 

 describe the colour. Looking at the whole bird, 

 in England especially, there is distinctly a blue 

 dun shade or appearance about it ; but when we 

 examine a single feather, it is difficult to see any 

 blue colour in it at all. The English Standard 

 gives the ground as blue-white, evenly barred 

 with bands of black of a beetle-green sheen ; 

 while the American Standard gives the ground 

 as " greyish white," barred with " defined 

 bars that stop short of a positive black." 

 Yet average English feathers are certainly 

 darker and with more approach to blue-dun 

 in the ground colour than American feathers, 

 while on the other hand American birds appear 

 a distinctly brighter blue in the whole effect, 

 than English birds. The fact is that the colour 

 of a single feather is greatly affected by that of 

 any surface on which it is laid ; and when 

 American feathers are laid upon a white surface, 

 many of them appear merely black and white, 

 each colour being a little dull, the white not 

 quite pure and the black very slightly greyish. 

 The feathers in Fig. 98 are photographed thus 

 on a white ground, and show that effect ; on a 



