FOREWORD 



The writer's introduction into poultry keeping was in the 

 city of Boston, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1857. By the 

 spring of '68 I had a flock of nearly 400 birds, among them 

 a lot of the best Single Comb White Leghorns that I could 

 find. I went in person to New York City to get them. My 

 friends thought such extensive poultry keeping the limit of 

 folly, and freely remarked that I was going crazy. In those 

 days eggs were almost worthless during the spring and sum- 

 mer months, but would often sell for fifty cents per dozen 

 in the winter. This set me to thinking that perhaps it might 

 be possible to increase the egg yield in the winter, and by so 

 doing, make the fad a better paying proposition. Through 

 my experiments I found that all hens were not alike, that 

 some would be very good table fowl and poor layers. Others 

 would be very good layers and poor table fowl while still other 

 hens would be very fair table fowl and very fair layers. At this 

 time we had all the old fashioned breeds we could get, and 

 discarded them all for the Single Comb White and Brown 

 Leghorns. I had decided that knowledge w r as of commercial 

 value only when applied, and having a working knowledge of 

 the anatomy and physiology of the hen, I decided to try 

 to turn the same to a commercial account, and in a couple of 

 years had evolved what is now known as the Walter Hogan 

 the purpose you desire, by the relative thickness of and rlis- 

 System, which consists of ascertaining the value of a hen for 

 tance apart of the pelvic bones. Before 1873 I had communi- 

 cated this discovery to some of my friends under promise of 

 secrecy. One of them, Albert Brown, once a well known 

 banker of Amesbury, Mass., and H. O. Farrar, of the same 

 place, an overseer in the Hamilton Mills, and a light Brahma 

 specialist. After using the above so called system for a num- 

 ber of years, I developed a new method which I have taught 

 in part privately for some years, and which I now introduce 



