ands of dollars. We have tried faithfully to preserve the true Run- 

 ners for the farmers of the country, for it is on the range of the 

 farms that they are at the best. Here they are exceedingly val- 

 uable. The chief value of Runners lies in their capacity to be 

 veritable egg factories of large delicious, marketable eggs and 

 their foraging ability enables them to produce these great num- 

 bers of eggs more cheaply. But as foragers and layers the Amer- 

 ican Standard gave them a deadly blow in requiring "legs set well 

 apart" thus destroying the running gait and making poorer fora- 

 gers of them in injuring the type. Type, foraging ability and 

 egg production are closely associated, each dependent upon the 

 other. 



I have had much correspondence with breeders all over the 

 country and their unprejudiced testimony goes to prove the light 

 fawn Standard Runners poorer layers of (usually) smaller eggs. 

 They do not begin to lay so early in the season, nor continue laying 

 so late in the season as the true Runners. Another fault of the 

 light fawn birds is that they lay many green or tinted eggs ; at 

 first they laid all, or nearly all, green eggs, and as we had certain 

 knowledge that good strains of true or English Runners laid none 

 but white eggs, we called attention to the green eggs of the Stand- 

 ard birds, as one way of easily showing what had befallen the 

 breed in this country. The light fawn breeders have been trying 

 to breed out the green eggs, but I have evidence that shows that 

 even those most widely advertised as a "white egg strain" pro- 

 duced many green eggs. We support the white egg strains of true 

 Runners as opposed to mongrel breeds, layers of green eggs. As 

 the best and purest strains, descendants of the original importations 

 are layers of only white eggs, we believed that, as regards colors of 

 eggs, green eggs denoted impurity of breed. The belief holds 

 true so far as the descendants of the original Cumberland Run- 

 ners are concerned, but new knowledge has been gained and it 

 goes to show that green egg layers exist among the pure root-type 



135 



