114 ON ABNORMALITIES IN DOMESTIC FOWLS. [Junel6, 



June 16, 1903. 



F. DuOane Godman, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., Yice-President, 

 in the Chair. 



The Secretary read the following report on the additions made 

 to the Society's Menagerie in May 1903 : — 



The registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the 

 month of May were 122 in number. Of these 14 were acquired by 

 presentation, 7 by pui-chase, 17 were born in the Gardens, and 

 84 were received on deposit. The total number of departures 

 during the same period, by death and removals, was 143. 



Mr. F. Finn, F.Z.S., exhibited a living hen-feathered Bantam 

 cock and the feet of a fowl showing a three- jointed hallux, and 

 made the following remarks : — 



"Although there exist two breeds of fowls in which hen- 

 feathering in the male is a constant character — the ' henny ' Game 

 and the Sebright Bantam — yet the occurrence of hen-feathering 

 in the male as a casual variation appears to be so rare that I 

 thought the present specimen worthy of exhibition to the Society. 

 It is, as will be seen, a fully adult Bantam cock of no particular 

 breed, and certainly shows no traces of Sebright blood, being 

 single-combed and possessing black body-plumage and a white- 

 bordered neck-hackle, with no trace of the characteristic black- 

 laced plumage of Sir John Sebright's birds. It is interesting to 

 recall that that gentleman made his celebrated breed hen- 

 feathered by crossing into his strain a hen-tailed Bantam he 

 came across casually, just as this one occurred to me. 



" Mr. W. Bateson (' Experimental Studies in the Physio- 

 logy of Heredity ' : Royal Society, Reports to the Evolution 

 Committee, I.) speaks of the occurrence of a chick wdth a long 

 halhix bigeminus as an abnormality which was probably un 

 recorded. About a month before, however, in a letter published 

 in 'Nature,' January 30th, 1902,1 had mentioned the occurrence 

 of an abnormally long hallux in a common Egyptian fowl, which 

 I regarded as the homologue of the ' fifth ' toe of birds possessing 

 a double hallux. I did not keep this specimen, but I now exhibit 

 the feet of another Egyptian fowl showing the same peculiarity, 

 which I obtained last year. The long halluces have each three 

 phalanges, but the foot, although looking powerful, had no 

 particular power of grasping, as was the case with the first speci- 

 men I met with. I have seen another case of long single halluces 

 in a fowl which I believed to be Egyj)tian, and one also in a 

 ' Silky ' fowl, this breed having usually five toes. As Egyptian 

 fowls display a continuous variation from one normal hallux to 

 the 'five-toed' forms, more reseai-ch amongst them w^ould be 

 interesting. " 



