34 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



than it is even in the hands of those most successful at the 

 present day. Bacon said "To know well is to understand 

 causes." When Massachusetts poultrymen come to know 

 fully the causes which produce the results in ])reeding, incu- 

 bation, brooding and in diseases of poultry, to-day unex- 

 plained and unexplainable, they will promptly demonstrate 

 their ability to act on the knowledge gained, and furnish 

 poultry products of the very highest nutritive qualities and 

 in the most wholesome and palatable condition, at reason- 

 able cost to the consumers and increased profit to the pro- 

 ducers. 



The Chair. The professor has given us a fine lecture, 

 and no doubt will be willing to answer questions. The time 

 is yours, and we hope you will improve it. If no one 

 wishes to speak just now, I wish the lecturer would give us 

 a short history of the Rhode Island Reds. 



Professor Brigham. They go back, I think, fifty j^ears 

 now to a sea captain in south-eastern Rhode Island, — a 

 man who had retired from the sea, and who wanted to pro- 

 duce better chickens and better eggs than his neighbors ; so 

 he got a Malay rooster and a Cochin China hen, and crossed 

 them together and got the results. I Avas anxious to see if 

 it could be done in these modern times, so I got a Malay 

 cockerel and Cochin China hen, and I got Rhode Island 

 Reds. I visited the home of this sea captain after he was 

 dead, and saw his daughter, and bought some of the birds 

 which were in her yard, which had come down from al)out a 

 half a century of breeding. The Rhode Island Red is not 

 the result of breeding that bird by direct introduction, but 

 has resulted from all sorts of introduction of blood. In 

 Rhode Island one farmer takes Rhode Island Reds and thinks 

 he can improve them by introducing Light Brahmas ; and 

 another thinks he would like to have a Malay ; and another 

 a Brown Leghorn. They have the blood of about all the 

 breeds in the Avorld, and ought to be good. Lately, within 

 five or six years, attempts have been made to breed them 

 according to standards. There have been three standards, 

 and they have been mixed up ; but there has been lately 



