32 



supposing, the best-developed pullets and best-conditioned heifs 

 lay earliest, and generally begin laying a long time in advance of 

 the hatching season. As a rule, these are the first hens to go 

 broodv, and — broodies being always in demand early in the 

 season — they will almost certainly be used to hatch and rear 

 chicks. The eggs upon which they are set will not be their own 

 eggs, laid when they were in full vigor, but eggs from the general 

 flock. If any of their own eggs are among these, it is simply the 

 tailings of the produce of that laying period. Under such circum- 

 stances, the best hens may hardly figure at all in breeding opera- 

 tions, and the chances are that very few of the chicks produced are 

 from the best hens of the flock, and fewer still from any of these 

 best hens at the time they were most fit for breeding. 



When we note how often it happens that a breeder who carefully 

 mates up a pen of choice fowls from which to sell eggs for hatch- 

 ing fails to get eggs from them when he wants them most, it seems 

 absurd to suppose that, under a careless and hap-hazard system, 

 this trouble would be avoided regularly enough to make improve- 

 ment through natural selection. Natural selection, as has been 

 said, does operate in the poultry j'ard ; but, the lines of progres- 

 sive development being largely artificial, its general tendency is 

 to retard rather than to accelerate such development. Progress 

 along the artificial lines of development, which have given to 

 domestic plants and animals their peculiar value, may with truth 

 be said to be always the result of design on the part of the 

 breeder, — of design accomplished through intentional, intelligent 

 and systematic selection. Wherever you find a really good flock 

 of fowls, though they may be only mongrels, you will find that the 

 man or woman in charge of them has some system of selection 

 which will account for the excellence of the flock. It may not be 

 as comprehensive and thorough as the methods of an expert and 

 critical breeder, and will not make as great improvement or im- 

 prove so rapidly, but it will at least save the flock from marked 

 deterioration. 



There are several ways by which a farm flock can be kept up to 

 a very good standard of excellence for practical purposes, by just 

 a little effort of the keeper. Thus, where it is the practice to take 

 the eggs used for hatching from the general flock, if, besides re- 

 serving his best pullets, the keeper weeds out all the decidedly in- 

 ferior ones, and uses only well-developed males, any one of which 

 -would be considered a desirable breeder, the stock cannot go back 

 very rapidly, even though, as we have seen, there might not be 

 enough of the product in any year from the best birds to strongly 

 impress their quality on the flock. 



