v] White Fowls 103 



Bantams is also a recessive. Strictly speaking perhaps 

 this breed should not be called white. Though appearing 

 white on casual inspection, more careful examination always, 

 I believe, reveals the presence of one or more ticks of grey 

 colour. These flecks of grey colour may be extremely 

 minute, but in our experience are never absent. The down, 

 too, of the breed is of a faint bluish or smoky colour, though 

 there is no such smokiness in the adult plumage. 



Lastly we have to consider the white of White Silky 

 fowls, which is again a recessive to colour. The adult 

 Silky is pure white as a rule, but like the White Rosecomb, 

 the down of the chickens has some colour usually (though 

 perhaps not always). The colour in this case however is 

 buff, not blue or black, and it occurs on the sides of the 

 head, in the region of the pale stripes of striped chickens, 

 and on the rump. 



To resume : there are four kinds of whites. 



(i) Dominant white of White Leghorns. A pure 

 white. 



(2) Recessive white of our own derivative strain. 



(3) Recessive white of Rosecomb Bantams. 



(4) Recessive white of Silky fowls. 



Crossed with coloured breeds such as Brown Leghorn 



(i^ gives white birds with a little colour. 



(2), (3) and (4) give wholly coloured birds with the 

 pigmentation of the plumage as fully de- 

 veloped as in any coloured breeds. 



The next point concerns the relations of the various 

 Recessive whites with each other, and is of considerable 

 interest. Our experiments have shown that the cross 

 between Recessive whites (2) and the Silky (4) gives ex- 

 chisively whole-coloured birds m F^, In /% such birds 

 give 9 whole-coloured to 7 whites. Of the 7 whites some 

 have white down like the Recessive white (2), while others 

 have buff in the down like the Silky (4)"^. The appearance 

 of coloured F^ from two whites, with 9 coloured : 7 white in 

 F^, is obviously a phenomenon comparable with that which 

 has been described in the Sweet Peas and Stocks. The 

 two white types (2 and 4) evidently contain complementary 



* The numerical relations of these two forms are not yet clear. 



