316 AMERICAN POULTRY ASSOCIATION 



tiful green gloss which sets off the white section to so much ad- 

 vantage. The black of the flights, secondaries and main tail 

 feathers has no greenish sheen as a rule, which is, moreover, 

 not required. Strong, positive black is necessary to give quality 

 to the specimen and it must be borne in mind at all times that 

 strength of color is always required. Black sometimes fades or 

 rusts ; that is, instead of being positive in character, it loses the 

 intensity necessary to be so classified in the list of colors. That 

 color which the Standard would call black, or positive black, is 

 sometimes described as coal black. The shade of black thus de- 

 scribed is the shade usually referred to in the Standard, when it 

 does not specifically mention a lustrous, greenish-black. Some- 

 times, black will take on a luster of bronze and sometimes of 

 purple, neither of which is desirable. 



The black found in the plumage of the Columbian varieties 

 has not so often the character of defects enumerated above as a 

 general weakness because of an admixture of white. Often, 

 feathers that should be black are only partially black; often, the 

 portion of a feather that should be black is broken with a bar 

 or a splash of white or gray, while again, an admixture of a cer- 

 tain amount of white makes a dark gray or slate colored feather 

 or part of a feather, rather than a black. 



The white portion of the plumage on the surface is supposed 

 to be a pure white ; though, perhaps, a clear white expresses the 

 idea better. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining the amount 

 and intensity of black desired in neck, primaries, secondaries, 

 tail-coverts, etc., white undercolor, even in the sections that are 

 described as white on the surface, is not desirable. On the con- 

 trary, because of the difficulty of maintaining the intensity of the 

 black in those sections in which black is required, and also, in 

 order that black may be distributed in the right proportion in 

 these sections, slate of a stronger or lighter shade is required in 

 the undercolor of all the sections, even in those which are pure 

 white on the surface. In all sections except breast, the shade of 

 slate required is of sufficient intensity to be described as bluish- 

 slate, while that of the breast is bluish-white, a lighter shade of 

 slate. That is natural because the breast, when both sexes are 

 considered, is collectively the purest white section of the bird, 

 and farthest removed from the tail, the section that should con- 

 tain the most black. By this means alone can the lustrous 



