4 2 



INHERITANCE IN POULTRY. 



be found of exactly the same color ; some are a chestnut color, others darker, 

 and some quite light " (McGrew, 1901, p. 527). Of the Buff Cochins as 

 first imported to England, Wright (1902, p. 245) says: " The buff colors 

 were much subdivided, ranging from the lightest silver buff and silver cin- 

 namons through lemons and buffs to the deep colored cinnamons which 

 would now be called almost red. Originally, also, the birds were not 

 uniformly buff over the whole body ; even prize-winners were such as would 

 now be called ' tricolored,' the breast being lemon or orange buff, the 

 hackles and saddle much darker, and the wing darker still, even a red." 

 From all of this it is plain that buff is only a diluted form of red a color 

 that is abundant in the plumage of the Malay and Indian breeds, and the 

 replacement of all black by this buff is probably due, originally, to a xanthic 

 "sport." 



MATERIAL. 



The mother was the White L/eghorn Bantam No. 128, a heterogametous 

 bird, already discussed at page 40. The father was a Buff Cochin Bantam, 

 No. 545 (fig. 28), original stock, of whose ancestry nothing is known. 



RESULTS. 



i. GENERAL PLUMAGE COLOR. Thirty-one offspring show the following 

 distribution of color : White, 9 ; white and buff, 9 ; white and black, 4 ; 

 white, black, and buff, 2 ; black and buff, 4 ; black (all juvenile), 3. 



Calling the germ cells of the mother equally white and white- and-black 

 and regarding the buff as (imperfectly) recessive when paired with white, 

 we have 



Of the white and buff heterozygotes, white only appears in 9 ; the remainder 

 show some buff. White is dominant, but imperfectly so.* 



Wright (1902, p. 244) states in regard to crosses between white and buff 

 Cochins that io the early days they "bred most amazingly in regard to 

 color. . . . From one brood of ten chickens of this cross two pullets were 

 pure black ; two pullets and three cockerels black with more or less gold in 

 the hackles, and marked wings ; the other three darkly penciled birds." 



Hurst (1905, p. 134) finds that crosses between White Leghorn female 

 and Buff Cochin male (essentially the same crosses as mine) gave 60 chicks 



* But see fuller discussion of the heterozygous nature of my White Leghorns, page 40. 



