1 6 POULTRY CULTURE 



were so extensively used to grade up the native stock. They, 

 more than any other race, had the size which degenerate native 

 stock everywhere lacks. They were also of more robust constitu- 

 tion than the European races. It is said on good authority that, 

 as a result of the crossing of Asiatic on native stock, the average 

 size of fowls brought to the Boston market was doubled within a 

 few years. 



Development of the American type. Familiarity with the foreign 

 types and with the results of mixture with the native stocks quickly 

 developed the idea of a type of fowl better suited to America than 

 any of the others. While most poultry keepers were using stock 

 of the new breeds with their native stock, without much thought 

 beyond immediate results, some of the fanciers and the more intelli- 

 gent breeders were trying to make and establish breeds having the 

 characteristics generally desired. The ideal of the American type 

 seems to have become fixed in many minds at the very beginning 

 of efforts to improve poultry. In the few years following 1850 a 

 great many crosses were made for this purpose and offered as 

 new breeds. 



While information concerning these is meager, it can hardly be 

 doubted that many of these mixtures gave fowls differing but 

 slightly in substantial characters from the type desired. The com- 

 bination of such qualities with superficial characters attractive to 

 the mass of poultry keepers was not produced until the Plymouth 

 Rock appeared in the late sixties. This breed was first exhibited 

 in 1869, and immediately entered upon the career of popularity 

 which was soon to make it more numerous in America than all 

 other standard-bred fowls combined. While in the duplicating 

 of the original stocks, and in the perfecting of the breed, other 

 elements were used, and the various lines subsequently mingled 

 to such an extent that no accurate analysis of the blood lines of 

 the modern Barred Rock is possible, the first stock was made by 

 crossing a male of the hawk-colored type on black Asiatic hens, 

 called by some Javas and by some Cochins. This cross gave 

 birds of the color that had long been regarded as associated with 

 peculiar merit, and at the same time gave a fowl of the medium 

 size desired and having for its ancestry the hardiest native stock 

 and the hardiest of the foreign races. 



