74 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



I have never been able to hatch a chicken from the Minorca 

 pen." I replied, "He serves the hens out of sympathy." 



Another case was a Barred Rock hen, the only one a 

 neighbor had in a small flock of Houdans. He called me 

 one day, saying he had a remarkable pullet at his place, and 

 he wanted me to call and tell him how many eggs she would 

 lay her first laying year. She had been laying two months, 

 and he was keeping her record. I went with him, tested 

 the hen, and told him she might lay 250 eggs, but I did not 

 think that any of them would hatch. After her first laying 

 year was up, he showed me her record. She had laid 258 

 eggs, and although he had a good Barred Rock, cock bird 

 with her, and had set a number of settings under hens, he 

 failed to hatch a single chick. I could cite a great number 

 of such cases. 



In the first of these cases the fault was with the male 

 bird; in the last case the fault was with the hen; in both 

 cases the trouble was caused by a lack of prepotency (amative- 

 ness), and not through any defect in the anatomy of the birds. 

 Everything in the universe is governed by certain immutable 

 laws. If we understand these laws and can discover a way 

 to control them, we may be able to use them to our advantage. 

 Does the reader ever stop to consider these matters? What, 

 in your opinion, is the greatest effort of Nature? The writer 

 thinks it is the effort to reproduce the species in all their 

 different forms of animate and inanimate life. If the case 

 were otherwise, this earth would be barren of grass and 

 shrubs, of flowers and fruits, and of every living, - moving 

 thing on land and in the sea. What a desolate old world 

 this would be with only bare dirt and rocks and water ! And 

 when we consider what a wonderful thing life is, can we 

 doubt that Nature has made some extraordinary provisions 

 for controlling its inception? In the wild state the survival 

 of the fittest prevented degeneracy of the species, but under 

 domestication birds cannot follow their instincts; and their 

 owners should be familiar with Nature's laws in order to be 

 able to breed intelligently. 



When the writer was twelve years of age he took up the 

 study of human nature, and later had help from that great 

 teacher, Professor O. S. Fowler. Years of practice in dis- 

 secting and in anatomy and in the study of the skulls of 



