232 MR. J. T. CUNNINGHAM ON [ Mar. 17, 
successive seasons after the first year in which the birds are 
hatched. 
It will be seen that the absence of the moult, or the occurrence 
of continuous growth, if true for the birds in Japan, is not true 
for those reared in this country; and thus we have reason to 
doubt that uninterrupted or continuous growth of the tail-feathers 
is a fixed congenital peculiarity in the breed. 
Mr. John Sparks in May 1901 supplied me with the following 
information concerning the method of treatment applied to the 
birds in Japan :—‘‘ In order to ensure very great length of tail, 
the cocks ought to be kept on a perch as much as possible after 
they are six months old; and the tail-feathers should be pulled 
gently every morning, grasping the centre bone-like part firmly 
with the finger and thumb and pressing steadily downwards 
towards the tip, each feather being done several times. This 
softens the quill and causes it to lengthen. The birds do not 
moult the tail-feathers, but if one or more come out others 
immediately grow in their places. 
“The Japs themselves, those who take great pride in their birds, 
always roll the long feathers up like a lady rolls up her hair, and 
tie them, whenever the birds are let off their perches to walk 
about, which is about twice a day for an hour at a time. 
““T have often seen them thus treated in Japan, and those 
which Mrs. Williams and the Hon. W. Rothschild had from me 
were so treated on the voyage by the man in charge of them, and 
T sent them down to St. Austell in their regular perch-cages.” 
There is here a detail in the treatment of the feathers which, 
so far as I can discover, has never been mentioned in any 
published account of the matter ; and my own experiments, which 
I now proceed to describe, so far as they have yet gone, tend to 
show that this mechanical treatment of the feathers is the whole 
secret of the mystery. 
My own EXPERIMENTS. 
In May 1901, I received from Mr. John Sparks twelve eggs, 
laid by the fowls of this breed in the possession of Mrs. J. C. 
Williams. I afterwards ascertained that some of these were the 
produce of the pair originally imported from Japan, others were 
from the offspring of this pair, but all the eggs were of perfectly 
pure breed with no cross or admixture whatever. The eggs were 
incubated by an English hen of mixed breed, and on June 13th 
ten healthy chicks were hatched. Of the other two eggs, one 
contained a dead chick, the other was addled or not fertile. This 
shows that the eggs were remarkably fertile and of great vitality. 
The chicks were small, the eggs being not much more than half 
the size of ordinary table-eggs. Their colour was fawn, with a 
broad dark brown stripe down the middle of the back, a narrower 
stripe on each side of this, and a thin stripe of the same colour 
running from the outer corner of the eye. They were very 
