162 AMERICAN POULTRY ASSOCIATION 



least sound in both logic and science, strange as it may seem 

 the explanation flimsy as it is, that the tendency of the females 

 to become darker with each generation when not checked by 

 skillful mating or when unskillfully mated is explained by the 

 simple fact that the female of the first cross was so very dark, 

 black in fact, and contrawise the males are comparatively light 

 because the male of the first cross was light. This explana- 

 tion (?) is so clear, direct and logical that it has been accepted 

 by those of our breeders who demand explanations before they 

 proceed with their work as so apparent as not to require proof. 

 It has then become an axiom in their breeding code. Fortun- 

 ately, it is the fact with which these easily satisfied persons 

 dealt and must deal, rather than a supposition or a theory. In 

 the minor details of plumage, or type characters, the people who 

 accept this superficiality do not expect the male progeny to 

 inherit all the qualities of the sire nor the female progeny to 

 inherit all the characteristics of the dam. Instead, we have a 

 case of mixed inheritance, the laws of which are so complicated 

 and mystical that they defy comprehension, not to allude to an 

 explanation. 



Bishop's Explanation. The nearest to an explanation of this 

 phenomenon of light males and darker females which the writer 

 has seen was offered by the Rev. D. D. Bishop, a breeder of 

 both Barred Plymouths and Dominiques, nearly forty years ago. 

 Yet that is hardly an explanation because the question why 

 still remains unanswered. The fact that this phenomenon is 

 characteristic in all Dominique colored fowls is, however, well 

 brought out in the following paragraphs selected from the 

 work referred to at the beginning of the paragraph, "The 

 Plymouth Rock." 



"The most important and striking characteristic that pre- 

 sents itself to a student of Plymouth Rocks is the peculiar dif- 

 ference in the color effect in the two sexes. First, last and 

 always the males come lighter than the females. It is a thing 

 we must never forget in dealing with this .breed. It will beat 

 us if we do but we shall never beat that. It is in the birds; 

 it is the law of this color that the males will not only be sev- 

 eral shades lighter in color, but the width of the bars will be 

 about one-third of the light spaces between them. It is a very 

 light pullet that has the space between the bars equal in width 

 to the bars themselves, and from that the spaces grow less all 

 the way down to no space at all, or solid color. 



