84 Maine; agriculturai. experiment station. 1910. 



Studies on Hybrid Poultry.* 



When the Department of Biology of this Station was organ- 

 ized in the summer of 1907 a part of its work, as outHned in 

 the original plan, involved the study of inheritance in hybrid 

 or cross bred poultry. The general purpose with which the 

 studies in hybrid poultry were planned was primarily to inves- 

 tigate fundamental principles of inheritance. During the first 

 year of the work the experiments in this direction were largely 

 preliminary in character. A large number of crosses were 

 made for the purpose of getting a general view of the behavior 

 in inheritance of some of the characters seen in the common 

 breeds of domestic poultry. As a result of these preliminary 

 experiments it was finally decided to undertake a thorough 

 investigation of the reciprocal crosses of the Cornish Indian 

 Game and Barred Plymouth Rock breeds. The detailed study 

 of these reciprocal crosses was then begun in 1908. The pres- 

 ent paper is a report on some of the results which have been 

 obtained in this study up to the present time. 



There were a number of reasons why this particular cross 

 of Barred Plymouth Rock and Cornish Indian#Game was chosen 

 for detailed study. In the first place these two breeds of fowls 

 are strikingly different from each other in a wide variety of 

 characters. Some of the points of difference are indicated in 

 Table 2. 



The general characteristics of the two breeds crossed are 

 shown in Figs. 75 and 'j6. Figure 75 gives a representation of- 

 a male and female Barred Plymouth Rock, and Fig. "^6 of male 

 and female Cornish Indian Games. Unfortunately the photo- 

 graphs of the Cornish fowls are not altogether satisfactory. 

 The ruffled appearance of the feathers in the male is not char- 

 acteristic, and appears in this photograph only because the wind 

 was blowing when it was taken. 



*Papers from the Biological Laboratory of the Maine Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, No. 21. 



