THE CALL OF THE HEN. 25 



This is the rock that some old poultry-breeders are sometimes 

 wrecked upon. One case of national interest was the case of the late 

 lamented Professor Gowell, of the State of Maine Experiment Station. 

 He had started some years before to breed up a heavy-laying strain by 

 using the trap-nest, selecting eggs for hatching from hens that were his 

 best layers and conformed as near as possible to the standard, and using 

 cockerels hatched from these eggs to mate with his hens. Now this was 

 all right as far as it went, but there was something that the Professor 

 had not taken into consideration. He had procured the best birds he 

 could find, had trap-nested them to discover the hens that were the most 

 prolific layers, had selected the eggs from what he had considered to 

 be the best hens for the purpose (and few men had better judgment in this 

 respect). He had mated up the best-looking cockerels from these best 

 eggs from the best-laying hens, and according to all apparent precedents 

 was he not justified in expecting an increase each year in egg-production? 

 But what were the results? If reports are true, there was a decrease 

 in egg-production, and what do you suppose was the cause? There 

 must be some cause. There is a cause for every effect. Sometimes we 

 think things just happen; that there is no natural law that governs 

 them; that in this or that case it was all chance; that it may not have 

 happened to another person, and will not be likely to happen to us again, 

 and so we dismiss the matter only to have the same thing repeat itself, 

 until we either solve the problem or meet our doom through it. And 

 thereby hangs a tale. 



Some time in the summer of 1905 I received a letter from a doctor 

 in one of the suburbs of Boston, asking me what I would charge to visit 

 Orono, Maine, and have a talk with Professor Gowell, and incidentally 

 to drop a few remarks that might be of some help to him in his in- 

 vestigations. I had never met the Professor, but I replied to the Doctor 

 that I would go (I was then living in Minnesota), and would pay my 

 own expenses, as I wished to visit Boston, my birthplace, and where I 

 first started in poultry-keeping in 1857, and it would be a small matter 

 to go from there to Orono, Maine, where Professor Gowell was con- 

 ducting his experiments. While I was waiting for a reply, I decided 

 that as Professor Gowell had put so much time and thought into the 

 trap-nest proposition and had built so much on that one thing, and that 

 as he could get results from it (only it was a waste of time), that in this 

 first visit to him I would offer only one suggestion and that was the 

 secret of selecting the birds, both male and female, that would be sure 

 to breed progeny that would be better than their parents along the 

 lines in which the parents excelled, or, in other words, transmit their 

 predominating characteristics to their offspring; that is, if the cockerel 

 or cock birds and hens were typical meat type birds, the progeny would 

 excel along these lines. Some of them would excel their parents in the 

 production of meat; they would be hardier, better feeders, would digest 

 and assimilate their food better, and consequently arrive at maturity 

 sooner, and be of better flavor and more tender, and by breeding these 

 birds along the lines laid down by I. K. Felch, of Natick, Massachusetts 

 ("line breeding" he calls it), they would improve each season, so that 

 in a number of years there would be a great difference in their favor 

 over their parents. If the pen was a fancy proposition and had been bred 

 some years for fancy points, the progeny would show a decided improve- 

 ment in a few years over their parents. If the pen were the typical 



