186 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
pullets or cockerels at will the lot of the poultry-keeper will be a 
much happier one, and incidentally eggs for the breakfast-table 
should be cheaper. 
At the moment all that is claimed for sex breeding is that more 
cockerels are produced in the early months of the year than are 
likely later on. Some breeders hold the view quite strongly 
that you will get a larger proportion of cockerels in January and 
February than, say, in the next three months, and while I have 
no wish to insinuate a doubt about the theory I may say I have 
never seen it placed on a scientific basis. The claim is simply 
made from time to time, and it is tacitly agreed to, but so far as is 
known no one has taken the trouble to tabulate the results of 
early versus late hatching with regard to sex over a series of years, 
and until this is done we may respect the theory while we 
remember that it has no foundation in established fact. 
But while science has not yet achieved anything so radical as 
the determination of sex it has added largely to the practical 
knowledge of every poultry-breeder. 
Breeding for fancy poultry is largely a question of achieving 
special artificial and arbitrary characteristics of shape, size, feather- 
ing and colour, all of which are largely superficial. These are 
mainly arrived at by inbreeding, and are more the outcome of 
patience than of a deeply scientificscheme. Certain artificial mark- 
ings, excrescences, etc., are required for the accepted “ standard,” 
and it is the business of the fancy to acquire them. If the purpose 
of the fowl is to please the eye or to conform to certain arbitrary 
rules, then the breeding of fancy poultry is a matter for the fancy. 
It is a question that can hardly be argued about any more than a 
system of esthetics. All one can say is that for those people who 
like that sort of thing then that is the sort of thing those people 
like. 
What the general public is more concerned about, and what the 
nation as a nation is intensely interested in, is that portion of the 
food supply which the fowl can provide, either as a table bird or 
as an egg-producer. Fortunately we are going rapidly ahead on 
these two points. The production of fowls for food has few 
