66 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



and from some pens got good results from other pens not so 

 igood, and from still others very poor results. My previous 

 studies in anatomy had enabled me to select the matings from 

 birds that were all of the same type, and I expected to raise 

 a lot of poultry that would be duplicates of their parents as 

 iar as their egg-laying qualities were concerned. But after 

 numerous experiments in mating the 180 egg type cock bird 

 with 180 egg type hens I found I could not depend on getting 

 .definite results. 



Some are born rich some are born handsome, and some 

 are born lucky. The writer was born with none of these gifts 

 t>ut with a combination of faculties that compelled to inven- 

 tion, to wander and toil and delve in the fields, the by- 

 ways, and the mines of the mysterious. These researches with 

 the aid received by studying the pioneers in the same lines of 

 investigation led to the discovery as the writer thinks of the 

 fundamental principle that underlies the reproduction of the 

 species. After a number of matings that were more or less 

 discouraging failures I decided to look to the brain of the bird 

 as the seat of the cause of a great many of the variations be- 

 tween the characteristics of the offspring and those of the 

 parents. I had previously demonstrated by experiment that 

 environment had an influence on the shaping of the skull of 

 the birds. By focusing on this subject the skull knowledge I 

 foad gained in the previous nine years I was led to think that 

 the brain governed most of the functions of the body, and if 

 -so why not the reproductive function? I reasoned that as I 

 ft ad mated up several pens of the same type of hens with the 

 same type of male birds and that as there was no difference in 

 their temperaments that the hens all looked alike all weighed 

 alike, and were ah in the same condition or in other words 

 they were all m p'jifect condition, (to be more exoTici: ihc 

 hens were tivee hngtis abdomen, pelvic bone 1-15 of an inch 

 thick all hens were in good condition, the cock bn "!-, were t\vo 

 fingers abdomen, in iionric 1 ] condition and pelvic bunes 1-16 '<f 

 an inch thick, all hens were alike and all cock birds were alike 

 and all were about a year old) that there must be something 

 apart from the anatomy and physiology of the hen that gov- 

 erned or in some measure controlled the reproductive func- 

 tions. As I had exhausted all my resources in the above lines 

 J was very reluctantly obliged to enter a new field of re- 

 search- the field of Phrenology. I killed the cock birds that 



