THE CALL OF THE HEN. 59 
parents, as far as their egg-laying qualities were concerned. But after 
numerous experiments in mating the 180-egg type cock bird with 180- 
egg type hens, I found I could not depend on getting definite results. 
Some are born rich, some are born handsome, and some are born 
lucky. The writer was born with none of these gifts, but with a com- 
bination of faculties that compelled to invention, to wander and toil 
and delve in the fields, the by-ways, and the mines of the mysterious. 
These researches, with the aid received by studying the pioneers in the 
same lines of investigation, led to the discovery, as the writer thinks, 
of the fundamental principle that underlies the reproduction of the 
species. After.a number of matings that were more or less discouraging 
failures, I decided to look to the brain of the bird as the seat of the 
cause of a great many of the variations between the characteristics of 
the offspring and those of the parents. I had previously demonstrated 
by experiment that environment had an influence on the shaping of 
the skull of the birds. By focusing on this subject the skull-knowledge 
I had gained in the previous nine years, I was led to think that brain 
governed most of the functions of the body, and if so, why not the 
reproductive function? I reasoned that as J had mated up several 
pens of the same type of hens with the same type of male birds, and that 
as there was no difference in their temperaments, that the hens all 
looked alike, all weighed alike, and were all in the same condition— 
or, in other words, they were all in perfect condition (to be more explicit, 
the hens were three fingers abdomen, pelvic bone 1/15 of an inch thick; 
all hens were in good condition; the cock birds were two-finger abdomens, 
in normal condition, and pelvic bones 1/1. of an inch thick; all hens were 
alike and all cock birds were alike, and all were about a year old); that 
there must be something apart from the anatomy and physiology of the 
hen that governed or in some measure controlled the reproductive 
functions. As I had exhausted all my resources in the above lines, I 
was very reluctantly obliged to enter a new field of research—the field 
of Phrenology: I killed the cock birds that had given us the best 
results, boiled their skulls until free of flesh, and found them as in No. 
1, Fig. 85. The skulls of the cock birds that give the next best results 
were like No. 2, Fig. 35, and the skulls of the cock birds that gave the 
poorest results were like No. 4, Fig. 35. 
The Arrows A, B, C, and D show the base of the brain. If A were 
continued upward, it would pass through the projection 14 of an inch 
from the end; if B were continued, it would pass through the projection 
about !/; of an inch from the end; while C would be at the extreme end 
of the projection, and D would pass outside the skull. The part of the 
skull where the arrows 1, 2, 3, 4 point contains the rear lobe of the brain, 
an examination will show that the development of this portion: of the 
brain corresponds to the shape of the skull at this point. 
And right here is where we were on the point of the eerend great 
secret in breeding that would verify the saying that ‘‘Like begets like.” 
The first discovery was, that if we wished to raise pullets that would 
be good layers, we would have to mate good-laying hens with the same 
type of male bird, and not with the meat type—that is, the male birds 
would have. to be of the same temperament, of the same anatomy, 
and of the same physiology as the hen. I found that if I had a hen 
that laid 180 eggs by the trap-nest, and if I wanted to raise a lot of 
pullets that would average 180 eggs, I could not depend on the trap- 
