108 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 
suspicion verified; the indications of large numbers of eggs and ample 
machinery to go with them, with the wide, pliable pelvic bones; and 
just the opposite condition with the narrow ones, the very least, or no 
egg indications whatever, with the bones very close together at the 
points and unyielding to pressure, hard, thick, and rounced in. This 
experiment was tried again and again, with different breeds, but never 
with different results. 
I was satisfied I was on the right trail now, and determined to spare 
neither time nor money to make sure I was right. For several years 
followirg these discoveries I spent much time and money visiting well- 
known poultrymen and others, frequently paying as high as $10.00 for 
best known layers, only to kill them to prove or disprove my conclusions 
—to photograph the liye bird, next her dressed bocy, then ker skeletor. 
In every instance I found my theory correct. I divided my own flock 
according to my findings into three flocks, and the very first cay’s lay 
proved my theory beyond question, so far as one Cay, cculd. I then 
diviced other and many flocks; but wherever they were and whatever 
breed, without an exception the same result followed. 
Skipping a number of years, I might say right here that in 1904 I 
diviced the flock of sLeghorns, Wyandottes, and Plymouth Rocks at 
the Minnesota Experiment Station at Crookston into three pens: first, 
the best; second, medium to poor; third, very poor or barren. I was 
about twenty-five minutes doing this in the presence of C. S. Greene, 
at that time the manager, whom nearly all the leading poultrymen knew, 
and Mr. T. A. Hoverstad, then superintendent of the’ station. These 
gentlemen then had absolutely no faith inthe method, not knowing 
anythirg about it; but were assured by me that if the barren pen laid 
an egg or either of the others failed to perform as I indicated, they were 
at liberty to publish the method and me to the world as a fraud. The 
first day showed pen No. 1, 45 eggs; pen No. 2, 20 eggs; pen No. 3, 
no eggs’ and this continued, with slight variations, the entire period of 
the experiment, which lasted for weeks; though not a single egg appeared 
in the barren pen. The per cent of eggs to the 100 hens for the entire 
time was: First pen, 60 per*cent per day; second’ pen, 37 per cent: 
third pen, nothing. But for lack of room J might give many more experi- 
ments and tests fully as startling as the above. — 
But to go on: Within a few years after selecting my first layers 
in this way. I had a flock the larger part of which was laying 200 eggs 
and above per year, individual layers greatly exceeding this. 
Then came another discovery, fully as important as the first. I 
noticed that, though I hatched all my pullets from the best layers’ eggs, 
some of them were exceedingly poor layers; now and-then one of them 
barren. I studied upon this for a long time, spent more money, and 
killed many more birds. Then with another idea, which as suddenly 
as the first dawned upon me, I made for the slaughter-house once more. 
I soon had a row of forty or so dressed male birds: this time laid out 
before me; and then at a.glance I saw my long-sought solution. There 
was the same great difference in the pelvic formation found in the hens. 
I examined my roosters to find that half of them were absolutely worth- 
less. Why do I say that the rooster ‘‘is MORE than half the flock?” 
Because later I found, as many know, that the female offspring take 
largely after the father and the male offspring after the mother. It is 
so with all animals, and almost always so in the human family. Had 
