398 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



deteriorate, or at the very best show no perceptible improve- 

 ment. But every one may not agree as to the weight of that 

 fact as an argument; so, to any who disagree with that, I 

 offer another argument, which I think tliey will admit is 

 reasonable, which will show how unlikely it is that natural 

 selection, acting as indicated, should have any considerable 

 influence in improving a farm flock. 



In the first place, the poultry keeper Avho does not care- 

 fully reserve his best birds rarely breeds from the best of 

 any year's produce. His earliest and best pullets and cock- 

 erels go to market, because they bring best prices when sold 

 for table consumption. And, even if the flock does each 

 year contain some of the best of the produce of the preceding 

 year, it is by no means certain that the greater part of the 

 chicks from the flock will be from unions of best males with 

 best females, or that the best birds will give the most nu- 

 merous progeny. It often happens that an inferior male 

 is a much surer breeder than one vastly his superior in all 

 points the poultr}^ keeper prizes. Then, as to the hens : 

 in the case we are supposing, the best-developed pullets 

 and best-conditioned hens lay earliest, and generally begin 

 laying a long time in advance of the hatching season. As a 

 rule, these are the first hens to go broody, and — broodies 

 being always in demand early in the season — they will 

 almost certainly be used to hatch and rear chicks. The 

 eggs upon which they are set will not be their own eggs, laid 

 when they were in full vigor, but eggs from the general 

 flock. If any of their own eggs are among these, it is 

 simply the tailings of the produce of that laying period. 

 Under such circumstances, the best hens may hardly figure 

 at all in breeding operations, and the chances are that very 

 few of the chicks produced are from the best hens of the 

 flock, and fewer still from any of these best hens at the 

 time they were most fit for breeding. 



When we note how often it happens that a breeder who 

 carefully mates up a pen of choice fowls from Avhich to sell 

 eggs for hatching fails to get eggs from them when he wants 

 them most, it seems absurd to suppose that, under a careless 

 and haphazard system, this trouble would be avoided regu- 



