POUL TRY-CRAFT. 149 
which specimens of the breed are generally weak. Asa rule, deformities are 
to be avoided, It will occasionally happen that a deformed fowl is of such 
uncommon general or special excellence that the breeder will profit more by 
using it, breeding its excellence into and its defects out of his stock, than by 
rejecting it. These cases are rare, and before using a disqualified bird a 
novice should make sure that it really has the excellence he supposes it to 
have. In any case, it should be used in a special mating, and not allowed to 
communicate its defects to the general stock. A male and female having a 
deformity in common should not be mated together; nor should fowls having 
the same defect, not amounting to a deformity, be mated together. Shape is 
universally recognized as more important than color, yet in judging and in 
breeding, shape is too often sacrificed to color. The trouble is that color 
defects are, to most people, more conspicuous than shape defects. Many 
cannot distinguish between the different types of form; but nearly everyone 
can appreciate a color fault when once attention has been called to it. Besides 
this, there is a mercenary side.to the question. When rigid selection is made 
for both shape and color, the breeder finds only one good bird where, if shape 
defects are overlooked he would have two or three. 
Fowls lacking in size and weight should be rejected as breeders; or, at 
most, used with great caution. Lack of size is a common fault in all breeds. 
Of the thoroughbred fowls for which the Standard has weight requirements, 
the greater number produced never attain Standard weight when in breeding 
condition. Some breeders advocate breeding from ‘* medium sized” * males 
and large females, claiming that the female gives size and shape, the male 
color; or that the female gives size and practical qualities, the male shape and 
color.t Unless the size of the large females is objectionable, to make such 
matings a system is bad business. It will-take only a few experiments in 
crossing males of small breeds on females of large breeds to convince anyone 
that the greater part of the progeny will come intermediate in size, a few 
being as small as the sire, a few as large as the dam. The prevalence of the 
intermediate size may not at first be noticeable in the offspring of small males 
and large females of the same breed, but a second medium sized male mated 
to large pullets from the first will get so few large chicks of either sex that 
the breeder will begin to know where he is ‘‘ at.” 
* NoTE.— With some few medium-sized means, of Standard weight or a drttle more; 
but more often the ‘‘ medium sized” males are below Standard weight, and very much 
smaller than the best developed males of their kind; —and in speaking of best developed 
males, excessively large, coarse specimens are barred. 
+ Note.— In the face of facts accessible to anyone who opens his eyes to see them, 
such broad generalizations are absurd. The most frequently recurring case of the com- 
monest form (offspring resembling one parent more than the other) of direct heredity, is 
that daughters resemble the sire, sons the dam. This is known as ‘‘cross heredity.” 
Though the most common case, it is not by any means a rule, for cases where sons most 
closely resemble the sire, daughters the dam, and cases where offspring of both sexes 
inherit quite equally from sire and dam, are numerous. 
