APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING 525 



are inconsistent. If followed, they lead to a double-mating system and to the 

 development of male and female lines as subvarieties. 



Mating white fowls. The novice usually assumes that white birds must be 

 easy to breed, for (as he supposes) they have no color. The fancier of white 

 fowls soon finds that it is as difficult to produce an absolutely white bird as to 

 produce a party-colored bird perfect in all sections, and particularly difficult to 

 produce the combination, now required by the American Standard, of dead- 

 white plumage and yellow legs, beak, and skin. Most of the birds of this 

 description seen in the 

 shows are washed to re- 

 move from the feathers 

 the oil which gives them 

 a creamy tint, and some 

 are bleached to remove 

 the more objectionable 

 brassiness prevalent in 

 new white varieties and 

 in carelessly bred stock. 

 " White " as a description 

 of a color of poultry is al- 

 ways relative ; birds that 

 have positive white where 

 they are white, and no 

 trace whatever of other 

 color, are not known to 

 poultrymen. In the col- 

 ored varieties of poultry 

 we find everywhere the 

 principal effects due to FIG. 551. Single-Combed Black Minorca cock. (Pho- 

 varying intensities and tograph from owner, Arthur Trethaway, Wilkes- 

 combinations of black and Barre, Pennsylvania) 



red. In the whitest fowls 



traces of one or another of these colors are always present, 1 sometimes toning 

 the white throughout, sometimes appearing as splashes or ticks of red or black. 

 It has long been observed by fanciers that the whitest birds are most likely to 

 have black ticking in the web of the feathers (sometimes a great deal of it), while 

 those free from black ticking are likely to be creamy, that is, have a trace of 

 red. Apparently, the small residue of color left after the elimination of color 

 has been carried as far as possible will be, as a rule, of one color or the other, 

 red or black, not both ; and apparently, a residue of red tends to distribute 

 itself throughout the plumage and a residue of black to appear in specks or 



1 To the novice not trained to consider colors in poultry critically, such state- 

 ments always seem absurd. He supposes that he has seen hundreds or thousands 

 of domesticated fowls that are absolutely white. His awakening comes when he 

 exhibits a bird that he supposes is white. 



