BREEDING DARK BRAHMAS. 151 



For breeding rocks, perfectly black- breasted ones are 

 essential The whole under parts must be dense in colour, 

 and the hackles pure in colour, straw-colour being both a 

 great fault and strongly hereditary. The pullets or hens 

 must have sharply-striped rather than very dark hackles, and 

 the darker they are in reason the better. For pullet-breeding, 

 the hens or pullets must have good dark hackles, every breast- 

 feather (and the rest too) be thoroughly well pencilled, " filled 

 up " over the feather, and free from any streakiness. But the 

 cock must be particularly selected as known to be bred from 

 such a hen as this. Such cocks very often have a small white 

 spot on the end of each breast^feather, and a slight white 

 edging to the fluff; such are generally valuable, and often 

 breed the best-marked birds, but they must have good broad 

 black stripes in their neck and saddle-hackles. If well 

 descended as above, however, good black-breasted exhibition 

 cocks may also be found to breed good pullets ;* but the hackles 

 are essential 



The ear-lobes are red, and should fall below the wattles in 

 both breeds. And it is a great matter, so far as appearance 

 goes, that the head and beak be short and not long, and with a 



* A striking example of this may be mentioned in a cockerel, bred by 

 ourselves, which won the Crystal Palace and Birmingham cups in 1874, 

 and was perfectly black-breasted. Claimed at the latter show by Messrs. 

 Xewnham and Manby, this bird was the progenitor of a large number of 

 pullets, perhaps the finest as a lot ever bred by one individual, and whose 

 blood is to be found, we believe, in all the winning strains of pullets down 

 even to the present day. The same was the case with Mrs. Hurt's noble 

 strain, from which half the blood of the above bird was derived. On the 

 other hand, the excellence of the same mixture of blood as regards 

 exhibition cockerels may be judged not only from the specimen referred 

 to, but from the fact that another cockerel of nearly the same breeding, 

 purchased from the produce of a sitting of eggs sold by us, was the chief 

 progenitor of Mr. Lingwood's celebrated strain of cockereLj, for years pre- 

 eminent at the leading shows. 



