THE CALL OF THE HEN. 123 



suspicion verified; the indications of large numbers of eggs and ample 

 machinery to go with them, with the wide, pliable pelvic bones; and 

 just the opposite condition with the narrow ones, the very least, or no 

 egg indications whatever, with the bones very close together at the 

 points and unyielding to pressure, hard, thick, and rounded in. This 

 experiment was tried again and again, with different breeds, but never 

 with different results. 



I was satisfied I was on the right trail now, and determined to spare 

 neither time nor money to make sure I was right. For several years 

 following these discoveries I spent much time and money visiting well- 

 known poultrymen and others, frequently paying as high as $10.00 for 

 best known layers, only to kill them to prove or disprove my conclusions 

 to photograph the live bird, next her dressed body, then her skeleton. 

 In every instance I found my theory correct. I divided my own flock 

 according to my findings into three flocks, and the very first day's lay 

 proved my theory beyond question, -so far as one day could. I then 

 divided other and many flocks; but wherever they were and whatever 

 breed, without an exception the same result followed. 



Skipping a number of years, I might say right here that in 1904 I 

 divided the flock of Leghorns, Wyandottes, and Plymouth Rocks at 

 the Minnesota Experiment Station at Crookston into three pens: first, 

 the best; second, medium to poor; third, very poor or barren. I was 

 about twenty-five minutes doing this in the presence of C. S. Greene, 

 at that time the manager, whom nearly all the leading poultrymen knew, 

 and Mr. T. A. Hoverstad, then superintendent of the station. These 

 gentlemen then had absolutely no faith in the method, not knowing 

 anything about it; but were assured by me that if the barren pen laid 

 an egg or either of the others failed to perform as I indicated, they were 

 at liberty to publish the method and me to the world as a fraud. The 

 first day showed pen No. 1, 45 eggs; pen No. 2, 20 eggs; pen No. 3, 

 no eggs, and this continued, with slight variations, the entire period of 

 the experiment, which lasted for weeks; though not a single egg appeared 

 in the barren pen. The per cent of eggs to the 100 hens for the entire 

 time was: First pen, 60 per cent per day; second pen, 37 per cent; 

 third pen, nothing. But for lack of room I might give many more experi- 

 ments and tests fully as startling as the above. 



But to go on: Within a few years after selecting my first layers 

 in this way, I had a flock the larger part of which was laying 200 eggs 

 and above per year, individual layers greatly exceeding this. 



Then came another discovery, fully as important as the first. I 

 noticed that, though I hatched all my pullets from the best layers' eggs, 

 some of them were exceedingly poor layers; now and then one of them 

 barren. I studied upon this for a long time, spent more money, and 

 killed many more birds. Then with another idea, which as suddenly 

 as the first dawned upon me, I made for the slaughter-house once more. 

 I soon had a row of forty or so dressed male birds this time laid out 

 before me; and then at a glance I saw my long-sought solution. There 

 was the same great difference in the pelvic formation found in the hens. 

 I examined my roosters to find that half of them were absolutely worth- 

 less. Why do I say that the rooster "is MORE than half the flock?" 

 Because later I found, as many know, that the female offspring take 

 largely after the father and the male offspring after the mother. It is 

 so with all animals, and almost always so in the human family. Had 



