210 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



when possible, to divide the females into two pens and head each of the 

 pens with a male, one having as orange-colored legs as you can procure 

 and the other male having as sound black color as is consistent with a 

 yellow leg. Use the brightest shanked females with the first male and 

 the slaty shanked ones with the second male. Mating No. 1 will breed 

 the best pullets, and Mating No. 2, the best cockerels. 

 As we wrote for the Wyandotte Breed Standard : 



It is the old question of under color versus surface color. The evidence is 

 invariably and definitely favorable to the possibility of combining pure yellow shanks 

 with a black surface color; it is when the black is carried dov/n to the skin that the 

 shanks are dark. Let the breeder, therefore, remember and be encouraged by the 

 fact that Black Wyandottes in American shows may now have slate under-color. 

 "Slate" is defined by the lexicographer of this text as "synonymous with gray," and 

 gray is a color between white and black. And, lastly, the breeder, instead of 

 taking up old prejudices of the fancy, should consider the wild birds, those marvels 

 of the alchemy of Nature, whose surface plumage is painted with the brush of a 

 Master Hand, and whose under-color comes as it will, always serving in subordina- 

 tion or to help forward and promote the perfection of the surface color. In the 

 theory of natural selection, color of the under-plumage has no place, for it can exert 

 ro direct infiuence on the instinct and, preference of the species, and therefore nature 

 i^ able to concentrate her fforts in the production of a beautiful and harmonious 

 surface color. The surface is the beautiful part of a bird, anyway. 



