POULTRY NOTES — 1909. IO9 



vidual varying from the pure and uniform black slightly. One 

 hybrid chick showed to some extent the Game down pattern. 

 A little of the down, particularly in the head region, is in some 

 individual hybrids a very dark red. . So. far as our observa- 

 -tions extend the down color of the chicks is the same regardless 

 of the direction of the cross. The just hatched chicks are not 

 distinguishable in the cross and its reciprocal. The distinction 

 in plumage color between the pullets of the two crosses does 

 not appear until after the birds are feathered out. 



If one were anxious to put these results into strictly Men- 

 delian terminology, it might perhaps be said that the Barred 

 Rock chick down condition is .dominant over the condition of 

 the down in the Cornish Indian Game. This, however, does 

 not give a fair representation of the actual facts. These facts 

 are, as has been indicated above, that the hybrid chicks are 

 different in appearance Avhen just hatched from either pure 

 Plymouth Rock or pure Cornish Indian chicks. They do not 

 show the down pattern of either breed and furthermore their 

 degree of pigmentation is more intense than that of either 

 breed. In a mixed lot of chickens consisting of pure Barred 

 Rocks and hybrids there is never any difficulty on the part of 

 an experienced person in picking out at once the hybrid chicks 

 frim the Barred Rocks. In other words, here just as in so 

 many other cases, the heterozygotes are recognizable as such 

 by their somatic characteristics., 



THE INHERITANCE OF COMB FORM. 



In the hybrids here discussed we have the results of crossing 

 two distinct comb types, as already indicated in Table 2. The 

 Barred Plymouth Rocks have a typical single comb and the 

 Cornish Indian Games have a typical pea comb. With the 

 rediscovery of Mendel's law of inheritance in 1900 one of the 

 first characters to receive investigation was the comb form of 

 domestic fowls. Tlie cross between single and pea comb has 

 been studied by several investigators in the hybrids between a 

 number of different breeds of poultry. In his latest work on 

 the sulijcct, Batcson (Joe. cit. p. 62) has the following to say 

 regarding the inheritance in this cross of single by pea : "The 

 /'', from pea by single is pea, that character manifesting a defi- 

 nite dominance. The heterozygous pea combs are generally 



