272 PRINCIPLES OF STOCK-BREEDING. 



" Out of the eight hens he saved four (which were 

 alive a year ago), and last season two years after the 

 Brown Leghorn cock was dead more than one-quarter 

 of Mr. Barnes's chicks, bred from the old Light Brah- 

 ma hens with a Light Brahma cock only since, came 

 spotted, speckled, and splashed with brown feathers." ' 



Mr. Charles H. Edmonds, of Melrose, " allowed a 

 Sebright cock to run for a few weeks " with his Light 

 Brahma fowls. " In the fall his Light Brahma chicks 

 were marked with distinct Golden Sebright feathers, 

 and for two years succeeding this marking showed 

 itself on scores of his chicks, from this very flock of 

 Light Brahmas, when the Sebright cock had been gone 

 from his premises over two seasons." 8 



In discussing this class of cases, Mr. Wright re- 

 marks: "But the fact remains proved beyond the 

 possibility of doubt that again and again hens of dif- 

 ferent breeds, and female animals of various kinds, 

 after the birth of half-bred offspring, have ever after- 

 ward manifested a plainly-evident tendency to pro- 

 duce offspring bearing more or less strong traces of 

 the same characters. This tendency greatly varies, 

 and cannot therefore be calculated ; but it exists, and 

 tends to show that a given chick may, in a certain 

 mythical sense, have two fathers, or rather that the 

 progeny of one bird is in some mysterious way modi- 

 fied by the previous union with another. 



" The most probable explanation is, that as habit 

 is the developed tendency to do again what has al- 

 ready been done, so the female reproductive system, 



The Poultry World, October, 1877, p. 326. 

 9 Ibid., p. 327. 



