16 THE CALL OF THEJIEN. 



to lay. I thought that if they did not know that much of the laying 

 proposition, I would be safe in going ahead with publishing my secrets. 

 The letters I received were left in Minnesota when I came to California 

 shortly before the earthquake in 190fi, so I cannot name the judges at 

 present, but they will remember me as the proprietor of the Fergus 

 Falls Woolen Mills; and I must say they replied in a very courteous 

 manner, saying there was no way except the general appearance of the 

 bird, as to its maturity of form, redness of comb and wattles, singing, 

 looking for nest, etc. One only of the number charged me one dollar 

 for this information. 



Failing health obliged me to dispose of my manufacturing business 

 and retire to the farm, and it was in the spring of 1905 before I published 

 my "Walter Hogan System," when it appeared in a number of poultry 

 papers. (See Reliable Poultry Journal, March, 1905.) I did not 

 copyright the work at that time, although my experience in mechanical 

 inventions had taught me that I should have done so, and the following 

 August imitations began to appear until in 1912 a number of different 

 parties in the United States and foreign countries were claiming author- 

 ship and selling it under the same or different titles. 



My years of research and expense brought me no financial returns, 

 and in the spring of 1906 I left Minnesota for California, a physical and 

 financial wreck. After having regained my health, I began here at 

 Petaluma to build up the same kind of a flock of layers that I had done 

 in previous years, with the idea of publishing my entire work when I 

 should have bred up a strain of 200-egg hens and better. 



After I removed to California, Professor M. E. Jaffa, of the Uni- 

 versity of California, became interested in the matter, and at the request 

 of the Petaluma Poultry Association, had the discovery tested at the 

 California Poultry Experimental Station for two years, and continued 

 for two years longer for the purpose of determining the value of four- 

 year-old hens as layers, as it is outlined in this book in the chapter 

 relating to the selection of the best layers in a flock. 



It was also tested in New Zealand by D. D. Hyde, chief poultry 

 expert for the New Zealand Government, and Prof. Brown, of the New 

 Zealand Poultry Experiment Station. I have repeatedly been requested 

 by my friends in different parts of the world to publish the full matter 

 in book form, but poor health and lack of sufficient funds have pre- 

 vented me from doing so until now. As this work will be copyrighted, 

 I do not anticipate the literary pirates will raid it as they have my 

 former work. In justice to the poultry fraternity, I want to say that 

 while I have been and am now a member of the American Poultry 

 Association, and have raised poultry fifty-six years, and now raise them 

 by the thousand, I have never in the past classed myself as a "poultry- 

 man" in the strict sense of the word. Neither do I claim that I am the 

 only one who has discovered the facts set forth in this book. I only 

 know that I have never seen them in print before. I know what the 

 results of following this method have been with me, and I feel safe in 

 assuming that the things I have discovered have not been known. 

 Hundreds have known me as an inventor and woolen manufacturer 

 where one would know me as a "poultry crank;" and the apology I have 

 for offering this book to the public in a field already crowded with poultry 

 literature is the earnest solicitation of my friends. 



WALTER HOGAN. 

 Petaluma, Cal, July 7, 1920. 



