32 PROGRESSIVE POULTRY CULTURE 



THE PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 



Heredity, Only a little experience in breeding poul- 

 try is sufficient to convince the breeder that heredity 

 both helps and hinders his operations. He learns in 

 a very practical way that he has to reckon with the cer- 

 tainty of the inheritance of faults as well as desirable 

 qualities of parents by the offspring. 



Heredity has been denned as "the inheritance by 

 the offspring of the characters of the parents, at the 

 time of procreation." The parents repeat themselves 

 in their descendants. 



Of all the qualities of the parents transmitted to 

 their offspring a portion only are apparent to our senses. 

 Other characteristics are not so evident or escape our 

 means of observation. 



To explain the degrees of conspicuousness of par- 

 ental characteristics in the offspring two terms have 

 been used dominant and latent. Dominant characters 

 are those which are very apparent in the offspring. 

 Latent characters are such as apparently disappear, be- 

 come obscured, or hidden from our observation. Domi- 

 nant characters in one generation may become latent 

 in the offspring of a later generation. Latent char- 

 acters may reappear after one or more, generations, 

 sometimes becoming dominant. 



In the mingling of the parental qualities in differ- 

 ent offspring of the same parentage, there is never the 

 same arrangement of dominant and latent characters. 

 No two chicks of the same parentage are exactly alike. 

 There is a rearrangement each time, which brings out 

 qualities more or less dominant or conspicuous and the 

 combination gives to each offspring its own individu- 

 ality. 



Atavism. If characters become dominant which 

 were latent in the parents but apparent in a previous 

 generation there is said to be a reversion or "throw- 

 ing back." The offspring inherits through the parents 

 some evident characteristic quality of a grandparent or 

 of some more ancient ancestor. The scientific term of 



