56 AMERICAN POULTRY ASSOCIATION 



CHAPTER II. 



PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING 

 FROM POULTRYMAN'S STANDPOINT 



Whatever progress has been made in the development of 

 different races of fowls, and from the Jungle Fowl to nearly one 

 hundred and fifty distinct varieties, all of which have distinguish- 

 able and distinct symbols of beauty, marks as great progress as 

 has been accomplished in any branch of animal breeding, has 

 been the result of the application of only a few elementary and 

 fundamental principles. 



"Like Begets Like." Upon this principle as a foundation 

 has rested the entire structure of standard-bred poultry breeding. 

 Coupled together with another principle quite as elementary and 

 possibly quite as fundamental, namely, that defects in one parent 

 may be corrected by selecting for the parent of the opposite sex 

 one that excels in the same character in which the first was de- 

 fective, or one that fails in the same character as the first, but 

 in the opposite direction, it is responsible for the progress made 

 thus far. 



This amounts to the following precepts : When two birds 

 of the opposite sex having like characters are mated, the progeny 

 will be like the parents with respect to these like characters; 

 when the characters are unlike in the parents, these characters 

 in the progeny will vary between the extremes exemplified by 

 the parents, with a tendency for the greater number of the prog- 

 eny to show a mean between these extremes. Together these 

 simple rules account for the development of the different breeds, 

 the creation of the new varieties of the same breed, and the im- 

 provement and development of those varieties already estab- 

 lished. 



Why Like Begets Like. Of this precept no fundamental or 

 scientific explanation can be offered. It is accepted as an axiom 

 to a certain extent, though to the full extent it does not, perhaps, 

 quite conform to modern theories. It is as fundamentally true 

 in the breeding 'of all other forms of life as in the breeding of 

 poultry. One of the first facts that any student of either plant 

 or animal life observes is that every seed produces after its 

 kind. The maxim "like begets like," then, is in a general way 

 axiomatically proved. In animal breeding, the reproducting sex 



