THE CALL OF THE HEN. < 1 



parents, as far as their egg-laying qualities were concerned. But after 

 numerous experiments in mating the 180-egg type cock bird with 180- 

 egg type hens, I found I could not depend on getting definite results. 



Some are born rich, some are born handsome, and some are born 

 lucky. The writer was born with none of these gifts, but with a com- 

 bination of faculties that compelled to invention, to wander and toil 

 and delve in the fields, the by-ways, and the mines of the mysterious. 

 These researches, with the aid received by studying the pioneers in the 

 same lines of investigation, led to the discovery, as the writer thinks, 

 of the fundamental principle that underlies the reproduction of the 

 species. After a number of matings that were more or less discouraging 

 failures, I decided to look to the brain of the bird as the seat of the 

 cause of a great many of the variations between the characteristics of 

 the offspring and those of the parents. I had previously demonstrated 

 by experiment that environment had an influence on the shaping of 

 the skull of the birds. By focusing on this subject the skull-knowledge 

 I had gained in the previous nine years, I was led to think that brain 

 governed most of the functions of the body, and if so, why not the 

 reproductive function? I reasoned that as I had mated up several 

 pens of the same type of hens with the same type of male birds, and that 

 as there was no difference in their temperaments, that the hens all 

 looked alike, all weighed alike, and were all in the same condition 

 or, in other words, they were all in perfect condition (to be more explicit, 

 the hens were three fingers abdomen, pelvic bone Vie of an inch thick; 

 all hens were in good condition ; the cock birds were two-finger abdomens, 

 in normal condition, and pelvic bones Vie of an inch thick; all hens were 

 alike and all cock birds were alike, and all were about a year old) ; that 

 there must be something apart from the anatomy and physiology of the 

 hen that governed or in some measure controlled the reproductive 

 functions. As I had exhausted all my resources in the above lines, I 

 was very reluctantly obliged to enter a new field of research the field 

 of Phrenology. I killed the cock birds that had given us the best 

 results, boiled their skulls until free of flesh, and found them as in No. 

 1, Fig. 35. The skulls of the cock birds that gave the next best results 

 were like No. 2, Fig. 35, and the skulls of the cock birds that gave the 

 poorest results were like No. 4, Fig. 35. 



The Arrows A, B, C, and D show the base of the brain. If A were 

 continued upward, it would pass through the projection ^4 of an inch 

 from the end; if B were continued, it would pass through the projection 

 about Vs f an inch from the end ; while C would be at the extreme end 

 of the projection, and D would pass outside the skull. The part of the 

 skull where the arrows 1, 2, 3, 4 point contains the rear lobe of the brain, 

 an examination will show that the development of this portion of the 

 brain corresponds to the shape of the skull at this point. 



And right here is where we were on the point of the second great 

 secret in breeding that would verify the saying that "Like begets like." 

 The first discovery was, that if we wished to raise pullets that would 

 be good layers, we would have to mate good-laying hens with the same 

 type of male bird, and not with the meat type that is, the male birds 

 would have to be of the same temperament, of the same anatomy, 

 and of^the same physiology as the hen. I found that if I had a hen 

 that laid 180 eggs by the trap-nest, and if I wanted to raise a lot of 

 pullets that would average 180 eggs, I could not depend on the trap- 



