PO UL TR r- CRAFT. 149 



which specimens of the breed are generally weak. As a rule, deformities are 

 to be avoided. It will occasionally happen that a deformed fowl is of such 

 uncommon general or special excellence that the breeder will profit more by 

 using it, breeding its excellence into and its defects out of his stock, than by 

 rejecting it. These cases are rare, and before using a disqualified bird a 

 novice should make sure that it really has the excellence he supposes it to 

 have. In any case, it should be used in a special mating, and not allowed to 

 communicate its defects to the general stock. A male and female having a 

 deformity in common should not be mated together ; nor should fowls having 

 the same defect, not amounting to a deformity, be mated together. Shape is 

 universally recognized as more important than color, yet in judging and in 

 breeding, shape is too often sacrificed to color. The trouble is that color 

 defects are, to most people, more conspicuous than shape defects. Many 

 cannot distinguish between the different types of form ; but nearly everyone 

 can appreciate a color fault when once attention has been called to it. Besides 

 this, there is a mercenary side to the question. When rigid selection is made 

 for both shape and color, the breeder finds only one good bird where, if shape 

 defects are overlooked he would have two or three. 



Fowls lacking in size and weight should be rejected as breeders ; or, at 

 most, used with great caution. Lack of size is a common fault in all breeds. 

 Of the thoroughbred fowls for which the Standard has weight requirements, 

 the greater number produced never attain Standard weight when in breeding 

 condition. Some breeders advocate breeding from " medium sized " * males 

 and large females, claiming that the female gives size and shape, the male 

 color ; or that the female gives size and practical qualities, the male shape and 

 color. t Unless the size of the large females is objectionable, to make such 

 matings a system is bad business. It will take only a few experiments in 

 crossing males of small breeds on females of large breeds to convince anyone 

 that the greater part of the progeny will come intermediate in size, a few 

 being as small as the sire, a few as large as the dam. The prevalence of the 

 intermediate size may not at first be noticeable in the offspring of small males 

 and large females of the same breed, but a second medium sized male mated 

 to large pullets from the first will get so few large chicks of either sex that 

 the breeder will begin to know where he is " at." 



* NOTE. With some few medium-sized means, of Standard weight or a little more; 

 but more often the "medium sized" males are below Standard weight, and very much 

 smaller than the best developed males of their kind ; and in speaking of best developed 

 males, excessively large, coarse specimens are barred. 



t NOTE. In the face of facts accessible to anyone who opens his eyes to see them, 

 such broad generalizations are absurd. The most frequently recurring case of the com- 

 monest form (offspring resembling one parent more than the other) of direct heredity, is 

 that daughters resemble the sire, sons the dam. This is known as "cross heredity.' 

 Though the most common case, it is not by any means a rule, for cases where sons most 

 closely resemble the sire, daughters the dam, and cases where offspring of both sexes 

 inherit quite equally from sire and dam, are numerous. 



