PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BREEDING 
in inheritance, Mendal’s law is utterly hopeless. The trouble 
is that the chief things with which we are concerned are not 
unit characteristics but are combinations of countless charac- 
teristics which cannot be seen or known, hence cannot be 
picked out. Thus the tendency to revert to pure types is 
foiled by the constant recrossing of these types. 
Mendal’s law is a scientific curiosity like the aeroplane. It 
may some day be more than a curiosity, but both have tre- 
mendous odds to overcome before they supplant our present 
methods. 
Prof. C. B. Davenport, of the Carnegie Institute, is working 
on experimental poultry breeding in its purely scientific sense. 
His conclusions have been much criticised by poultry fanciers. 
The truth of the matter is that the fancier fails to appreciate 
the spirit of pure science. The scientist, enthused to find his 
white fowl re-occur after a generation of black ones, is wholly 
undisturbed by the fact that the white ones, if exhibited, might 
be taken for a Silver Spangled Hamburg. 
Mendal’s law as yet offers little to the fancier and less to 
the commercial poultryman. Its study is all right in its place, 
but its place is not on the poultry plant whose profits are to 
buy the baby a new dress. 
Breeding for Egg Production. 
Attempts to improve the egg-producing qualities of the hen 
date from the domestication of the hen, but it has only been 
within the last few years that rapid progress has been possi- 
ble in this work. The inability to determine the good layers 
has been the difficulty. 
The great majority of people make no selection of hens 
from which to hatch their stock. The eggs of the whole flock 
are kept together and when eggs are desired for hatching 
they are selected from a general basket. It has been assumed, 
and is shown by trap-nest records, that eggs thus selected in 
the spring of the year are from the poorer rather than from 
the better layers. This is because hens that have not been 
laying during the winter will lay very heavily during the 
spring season. Many breeders have attempted to pick out 
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