HOW TO TELL HENS THAT ARE LAYING 301 
of the yellow colour on the legs. Yet how often do we see 
ignorant (?) dealers advertising year-old Leghorns guaranteed to 
have bright yellow legs as if this were a quality to be desired. 
According to Professor Keats, the external characters that indicate 
egg-production may be classified into four groups, depending on 
the way in which they manifest themselves. These groups are: 
(1) moulting, (2) pigmentation, (3) condition, (4) actions. 
A study of some of the various periodicals shows that at least 
as early as 1876 a woman contributor to The Cultivator and Country 
Gentleman recognised that late layers are late moulters, and that 
late moulters moult rapidly. This fact seems to have been re- 
discovered several times before Bulletin 258, “The Moulting of 
Fowls,” was published. Until that bulletin was published it 
seems to have been the general practice to strongly advise against 
using the late moulters as breeders, even if they were late layers. 
Some observations that were recently made gave a correlation 
of over °50 with a probable error of plus or minus ‘02. The 
relation held true, regardless of whether it was the first, second, 
third or fourth year of production. None of the birds that were 
more than half-way through their moult about 1st October were 
high producers, and only a few late moulters were low producers. 
The distinction should be clearly made, that birds moult late 
because they lay late, and not that birds lay late because they 
moult late. 
It is sometimes asked if the hens that moult late do not begin 
to lay much later the following year, due to their suffering from 
the cold because of a lack of feathers. On the contrary, the late 
moulters moult rapidly and begin to lay as soon or sooner than 
the early moulters. The observations taken in 1915 would show 
that the medium moulters begin to lay slightly ahead of the late 
or early moulters. 
It has been known for some time that during production the 
yellow pigment goes out of the shanks, beak, ear lobes, plumage and 
skin. The woman contributor before mentioned, in an interest- 
ing article in The Cultivator and Country Gentleman for 1879, 
writes as follows :—‘‘ Towards fall there comes a change over the 
