THE CALL OF THE HEN. 23 



with his hens. Now this was all right as far as it went, 

 but there was something that the Professor had not taken 

 into consideration. He had procured the best birds he could 

 find, had trap-nested them to discover the hens that were 

 the most prolific layers, had selected the eggs from what he 

 had considered to be the best hens for the purpose (and few 

 men had better judgment in this respect). He had mated 

 up the best-looking cockerels from these best eggs from the 

 best-laying hens, and according to all apparent precedents 

 was he not justified in expecting an increase each year in egg- 

 production? But what were the results? If reports are true, 

 there was a decrease in egg-production, and what do you 

 suppose was the cause? There must be some cause. There 

 is a cause for every effect. Sometimes we think things just 

 happen ; that there is no natural law that governs them ; 

 that in this or that case it was all chance; that it may not 

 have happened to another person, and will not be likely to 

 happen to us again, and so we dismiss the matter only to 

 have the same thing repeat itself, until we either solve the 

 problem or meet our doom through it. And thereby hangs 

 a tale. 



Some time in the summer of 1905 I received a letter from 

 a doctor in one of the suburbs of Boston, asking me what I 

 would charge to visit Orono, Maine, and have a talk with 

 Professor Gowell, and incidentally to drop a few remarks 

 that might be of some help to him in his investigations. I 

 had never met the Professor, but I replied to the Doctor that 

 I would go (I was then living in Minnesota), and would 

 pay my own expenses, as I wished to visit Boston, my birth- 

 place, and where I first started in poultry-keeping in 1857, 

 and it would be a small matter to go from there to Orono, 

 Maine, where Professor Gowell was conducting his experi- 

 ments. While I was waiting for a reply, I decided that as 

 Professor Gowell had put so much time and thought into 

 the trap-nest proposition and had built so much on that one 

 thing, and that as he could get results from it (only it was 

 a waste of time), that in this first visit to him I would offer 

 only one suggestion and that was the secret of selecting the 

 birds, both male and female, that would be sure to breed 

 progeny that would be better than their parents along the 

 lines in which the parents excelled, or, in other words, trans- 



