Curious Effects of Crossing. 147 



simile we have frequently adopted, no scion whatever can be grafted on a Cinnamon stock, but the 

 Cinnamon can be worked on any bottom. If a cock Canary, not being a Cinnamon or crossed 

 from the variety, be paired with a Cinnamon hen, the produce will not show the pink eye or any 

 cinnamon feathers, but will consist of Self-coloured Greens, cocks and hens, and Variegated Greens. 

 If, however, we invert the order of things, and infuse the Cinnamon blood by mating a Cinnamon 

 cock with, say, a Norwich hen, we obtain altogether different results. The progeny wil^, for the 

 most part, consist of Self-coloured and Variegated Cinnamons, with an occasional Green or Green- 

 marked bird, and with this strange result also, that all the Cinnamons, Clear or Variegated, will 

 be hens. This is a fact not generally known, but our own experience has shown it to be a fact, 

 while inquiry, on every side has never in any one instance led to a knowledge of any other result. 

 Some breeders will only declare positively as to the Yellow Variegated, but our experience is that 

 every bird which shows one cinnamon feather will be a hen. Among our northern breeders, who 

 above all things delight in a good " Dun-marked " bird, the Green and Green-marked birds from 

 this cross are not, for ordinary breeding purposes, recognised as Greens proper, however brilliant 

 they may be, but as bred from or "off" the Duns, and, when their pedigree is known, are much 

 valued for the results to be obtained from them. Paired with Clear birds of any variety, they 

 will throw both Green-marked and Cinnamon-marked, as well as pink-eyed clear-bodied offspring, 

 which last are Cinnamon in their acts and deeds. While penning these lines a friend writes to 

 us from Darlington : " I have bred this season from a Green-marked cock, the son of a Cinnamon, 

 which I have paired with two well-bred Norwich hens having no trace of Cinnamon blood in them, 

 and have got both pink-eyed Clears and Cinnamon-marked produce." 



To any one not acquainted with their peculiarities, it might seem strange to find Cinnamons 

 preponderating in a nest bred from, apparently, common Greens. But it is so very frequently, 

 and some admirers of the variety obtain their Evenly-marked Cinnamons from these Variegated 

 Cinnamon-bred Greens. Many of them, indeed, will throw decently-marked young ones with such 

 certainty as to be almost as valuable in their way as are the " muling " hens which produce the 

 wonderful hybrids, so mathematically exact in their marking, between the Goldfinch and Canary ; 

 some of the very best and most reliable of these muling hens being, in fact, full of Cinnamon 

 blood, which, when united with any other, seems to have the property of appearing either in the 

 green or cinnamon form in the eye-stripes, and other regions where native marking is probably 

 latent. We did not refer to this in our remarks on breeding Evenly-marked Norwich, simply 

 because we did not wish, in that place, to suggest a Cinnamon cross for that purpose ; preferring 

 rather to deal with the peculiarity here in the character of a property of this variety, which, 

 beyond any doubt, will be developed to an extent hitherto not dreamt of when the breeding of 

 Marked Cinnamons of the Norwich type, persistently followed up, will throw the Green-marked 

 birds so produced into the Norwich classes, just as the Green-marked Cinnamon-bred birds of the 

 Yorkshire type are thrown into the Yorkshire classes — many of the best Evenly-marked examples 

 of which are greatly indebted to Cinnamon blood for the accurate pencilling of their beautiful eye- 

 stripes. A fancier in the South commissioned us last spring to procure him two or three Evenly- 

 marked Yorkshires, for the purpose of mating them with Norwich hens, with the object of building 

 up a marked strain. We claimed three Buffs exhibited at a northern show by the most successful 

 man of the day and the holder of the largest stud of these birds, and, anxious to know the result 

 of the cross, arranged for information being sent us. We may say that these birds were marked 

 almost as perfectly as if painted. In due time the promised information came : " One of the 

 three hens you sent is a cock. I have paired him with a Clear Norwich hen of my own breeding, 

 Clear-bred for two generations, at least ; but the result has completely puzzled me. My young 



