EOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 



105 



naturally go together) ; for the best layers being the 

 most fully represented by newly laid eggs in the nests, 

 would, also, by obvious doctrine of chances, or, more 

 properly, by mathematical law, be the most fully repre- 

 sented in eggs for hatching purposes and in number of 

 chicks hatched and reared ; unless, indeed, extreme pro- 

 lificness was accompanied by deficient vitality of the 

 germs. It would be inevitable that the numerical pre- 

 ponderance of eggs for hatching laid by large combed, 

 prolific birds would operate to develop a strain of both 

 large combs and prolificness, until a limit was reached 

 beyond which the process could not go. This limit is 

 discovered in the fact that the production of an unusually 

 great number of eggs laid by a fowl is accompanied by 



FIG. 38. ARRANGEMENT FOR OPENING FEED BOXES. 



a lack of vitality in the eggs, excepting those at the 

 beginning of the laying, which experience shows are 

 comparatively exempt, though probably even these are 

 somewhat affected. 



There are two other ways in which the great size of 

 combs of fowls from the Mediterranean may have been 

 brought about. The combs were highly prized for food, 

 and, at certain eras, the monks were more given to 

 luxury than to austerity ; or, in periods of rigid disci- 

 pline, while living on bread and water they may have 



