466 POULTRY CULTURE 



are considered in estimating prepotency, and because only a small 

 proportion of poultry breeders carefully pedigree their stock on 

 the female side (so that the quality of prepotency in the females 

 used is not always discovered), the manifestations of breeding capac- 

 ity to which that term is applied are undoubtedly but a very small 

 part of the possible manifestations of unusual capacity for the 

 transmission of characters. 



Prepotency and selection. Ordinary cumulative results of selec- 

 tion and prepotency should not be confounded. Ordinarily prog- 

 ress in breeding to a type is slow, inch by inch, as it were. Let 

 a prepotent individual appear, and its power be discovered, and in 

 a single generation a breeder may make more progress through 

 this one individual than in a long term of years preceding. Within 

 another generation he may have raised the average quality of his 

 stock to very near the average of the progeny of the prepotent 

 individual. Within a very few years the distribution of this stock 

 may have made marked improvement in the general stock of the 

 variety. This is most noticeable in the early stages of the develop- 

 ment of varieties, when quality of characters is low or mediocre as 

 measured by the approved standard, and individual differences are 

 most marked. 1 A variety as represented at leading shows (where 

 the best specimens always come) may show no special merit or ad- 

 vance for years. Then an exhibitor will appear with a remarkable 

 string of birds. Immediately his stock is in great demand, and the- 

 next year's exhibits will show in the stocks of many breeders sim- 

 ilar improvement due* to infusions of the blood of the improved 

 stock, or to direct purchases of it. Progress by ordinary selection 

 is always slow hardly perceptible in the averages of consecutive 

 generations. Progress by the use of prepotent individuals is 

 immediately conspicuous. 



Transmission of prepotency. To what extent prepotency is trans- 

 mitted it is difficult to determine. Direct investigations of this point 



1 The Barred Plymouth Rock again affords an illustration, and in a leading 

 stock of that variety. About twenty years ago, H. B. May, after a visit to the farm 

 of A. C. Hawkins, said in conversation with another breeder: " Hawkins's stock 

 has been going back ; it is n't as good as it was a few years ago ; but he 's got one 

 cock there that can put him up in front again. I don't know whether he knows 

 it or not, but I think he does." That cock was Royal Blue. He was both a phe- 

 nomenal bird and a phenomenal sire and gave his name to the Hawkins stock. 



