MICNDELIAN KXPBEIMENTS ON FOWLS. 349 



19. Mendelian Experiments on Fowls. III. Production o£ 

 Dominant Pile Colour. By J. T. Cunningham, M.A., 

 F.Z.S. 



[Received March 1, 1922 : Read April 4, 1922.] 

 (Plates I. & II.) 



Two previous papers by me on Mendelian experiments in Fowl 

 breeding have been published in the ' Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Societ3^' The last, in the volume for 1919, described the pro- 

 duction of a recessive pile from a cross between a Silky hen 

 and a hanklva cock. The present paper records the I'esults of a 

 cross between a dominant white, namely White Leghorn, and 

 Black-red Game, made with the object of finding whether a 

 dominant pile v/ould result. 



In March 1919 I purchased from a Yorkshire breeder a Black- 

 red Game cock, which was stated to be pure-bred, and mated it 

 with two white Leghorn hens kindly supplied by Mr. Seth 

 Smith from poultry in the Society's possession. From these 

 parents two broods of chickens were hatched — the first on April 

 27-28th, the second about May 10th. There were eight chicks 

 in each brood. 



The colour of the down of these chicks was canary yellow, 

 darker round the neck, and diminishing to white behind and 

 below, but none were pure white all over. There was no sign of 

 stripes. Bateson (' Principles of Heredity,' 1909, p. 102) states 

 that the F^ ofTspring of White Leghorn by Indian Game or 

 Brown Leghorn is, when newly hatched, white with a few specks 

 of black. There may be some breeds of fowls which are pure 

 white in the down, but all that I have studied are not white but 

 yellow or fawn colour. It is well known that young ducklings of 

 white breeds are yellow in the down. Several of the chicks of 

 my cross had one or more black spots and others had black and 

 red specks on the head, but I was not able at the first examination 

 to take them up and examine them closely. The absence of 

 striping is interesting. The chicks in the down of the Japanese 

 Long-tails which I bred some years ago, and, I believe, the chicks 

 of Black-red Game and of Game fowls, generally have a median 

 dorsal dark brown stripe and two lateral stripes of the sawe 

 colour, the rest of the dowii being fawn colour or bufl'. The 

 recessive or non-coloured chicks from the cross of Silky by G- 

 hankiva had yellow down on the body generally with white 

 stripes in place of the dark stripes of the coloured chicks. 

 According to Bateson the chicks of pure-bred Silkies have the 

 same mai'king as this. It would seem, therefore, that in the 

 cross White Leghorn by Black-red the dominance of the white 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 1922, No. XXIY, 24 



