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White Plymouth Rock were very new ten or twelve years ago. 

 Buff Plymouth Rocks and Buft" Wyandottes may be said to have 

 been made within ten years ; and the exhibition Rhode Island 

 Red is of even more recent manufacture. In developing all of 

 these varieties the elementary rule has been : careful selection of 

 breeding stock, for the purpose of producing fowls of a certain 

 ideal type, which ideal type, though not uniform in the minds of 

 all the breeders, was far more uniform than the fowls themselves, 

 and very much in advance of the actual results obtained. 



Coming now to the direct application of the principle of selec- 

 tion in poultry breeding to methods of farm poultry keeping, let 

 us begin with the consideraliou of the conditions on farms — that 

 is, on ordinary farms. 



There are a great many farm poultry keepers who, while recog- 

 nizing the uses of selection, do not see how necessary it is that 

 they should take specific measures to insure that a right selection 

 is actually accomplished. 



It is often said that natural selection is constantly working for 

 the improvement of every stock of poultry, even when the owner 

 makes no S})ecial efforts for improvement. It is argued that, as 

 the best and most vigorous males fertilize the most eggs, and the 

 best hens lay the most eggs, the greater part of the chicks produced 

 each year must necessarily be from the best of the stock ; and thus 

 there will be constant improvement. This looks plausible, but the 

 argument goes to pieces as soon as we begin to examine it. 



To my mind, a siiflicient answer to it is found in the fact that 

 flocks of poultry left to improve in that way invariably deteriorate, 

 or at the very best show no perceptible improvement. But every- 

 one may not agree as to the weight of that fact as an argument ; 

 so, to any who disagree with that, I offer another argument, which 

 I think they will admit is reasonable, which will show how unlikely 

 it is that natural selection, acting as indicated, should have any 

 considerable influence in improving a farm flock. 



In the first place, the poultry keeper who does not carefully 

 reserve his best birds rarely breeds from the best of any year's 

 produce. His earliest and best pullets and cockerels go to market, 

 because they bring best prices when sold for table consumi)tion. 

 And, even if the flock does each year contain some of the best of 

 the produce of the preceding year, it is by no means certain that 

 the greater part of the chicks from the flock will be from unions of 

 best males with best females, or that the best birds will give the 

 most numerous progeny. It often happens that an inferior male 

 is a much surer breeder than one vastly his superior in all points the 

 poultry keeper prizes. Then, as to the hens : in the case we are 



