6o Maine: agricultural lxperimlnt station. 1909. 



TABLE II. 



Average Egg Production of "200-egg" Hens and Their 

 Daughters. November i to July i. 



Chaeacteh. 



Number of mothers completing records • 



Number of pedigreed daughters completing records 



Mother's absolute average egg production, Nov. 1 — ^July 1. 

 Daughter's " <' i. i. ', ■*■ ', ! "'^' 



Mother 's relative • i • ' " "1 1 . 



Daughter's " .... .. .. j ^ i^ 



Value . 



31 



180 

 135.13 



74.47 



55.8% 



30.8% 



The figures in this table for the longer period simply confirm- 

 and make more emphatic the results obtained with the shorter 

 periods discussed in Table I. Lengthening the period of record 

 does not bring mothers' and daughters' averages any nearer 

 together. There is no reason whatever to suppose that these 

 averages would have been any nearer together if records for 

 the daughters had been taken for the whole year. 



TESTS OF THE INHERITANCE OE FECUNDITY. 



There are two other points which must always be considered 

 in discussing the inheritance of tgg production besides the com- 

 parison of the daughters' average tgg production with that of 

 their mothers. In the first place it is quite conceivable that the 

 daughters' average production might be very much lower than 

 their mothers' average production and there still be inheritance 

 of the Qgg producing ability. This seeming paradox might arise 

 in this way. If unfavorable environmental influences acted in 

 the case of daughters the average production of the whole group 

 of daughters might be considerably below that of the mothers. 

 At the same time the exceptional mother (that is the mother 

 whose production was above the average for mothers) might 

 produce the exceptional daughter (the daughter whose perform- 

 ance was above the average for daughters). Such a condition 

 of affairs would obviously indicate the inheritance of egg pro- 

 ducing ability and yet clearly might exist quite independently 

 of the relative magnitude of the averages of the mother and 

 daughter groups as wholes. 



To determine whether there is such an inheritance of egg 

 producing ability independent of the group averages it is neces- 



