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separately, look attractive, but when we put them together in the same 

 box they look like a mongrel lot. We are today fifty years behind 

 the times in the poultry business, as compared to the fruit man, who 

 would be bankrupt if he were doing with his fruit what the poultry- 

 man is doing with his eggs. For example, they would be selling all 

 of their best varieties of apples mixed in the same barrels, and they 

 would be sold for cider apple prices. If the fruit man would sell ail 

 kinds in one barrel they would not bring much of a price on any 

 market, but when graded and sold for what they are and only one 

 grade in the same package, they will sell for the highest prices. There 

 is another point in the matter of grading which has to do with a well- 

 known fact, namely, that in the marketing of any product, when you 

 get good quality mixed with poor quality, the poor quality w r ill bring 

 down the price of the good more than the good will bring up the price 

 of the poor. If you do not believe this to be true, try sending in the 

 same crate two grades of potatoes to market and compare with what 

 you can get for the two grades separated. You will get a bad reputa- 

 tion for one thing, and a very low price for another thing. When- 

 ever you place eggs that all uniformly small by themselves, they 

 look larger than they would if placed by medium-sized or large eggs. 

 Medium-sized eggs by themselves look like pretty good eggs, but 

 when you get the big egg by the side of the medium-sized egg, the 

 medium-sized egg looks very much smaller by contrast. Some day, 

 it would be an instructive object lesson for you to try that little ex- 

 periment as an object lesson, as we do with our classes of students, 

 and see how easy it is to be deceived in sizes. 



There are some points to be brought 

 out in the matter of the color of an egg 

 as to its commercial value. The white 

 egg looks bigger than it actually is. The 

 white egg is more easily soiled, which is 

 to its disadvantage. The dark egg has 

 the disadvantage of being more difficult 

 to produce uniform in color for this rea- 

 son : that the color of the egg is pro- 

 duced by a deposit of pigment in the shell 

 making a portion of the oviduct, which 

 is apparently somewhat diminished as 

 the length of the "litter" is increased, 

 so that the first eggs that are laid by a 

 hen that lays colored-shelled eggs are 

 likely to be darker than the last eggs 

 she would lay in the litter. The eggs of 



Silver wyandotte. turkeys show this fault. When they 



have laid twenty or thirty eggs, the last eggs are almost devoid of 

 dark brown spots, while the first eggs are quite brown. If you have 

 a brown-shelled egg breed of hens, some of whom are just beginning 

 to lay, and some finishing their "litter," there is liable to be a little 

 difference in the shading of the egg. Practically all of our American 

 varieties, such as the Plymouth Rocks, the Wyandottes, Rhode Island 

 Reds, and also the Orpingtons and most of the other breeds that lay 

 shaded-colored eggs, are made up of a great line of varied ancestry, 

 including many varieties that laid differently colored eggs. There 



