1^4 Tim trap nest text Book 



bo more entitled to credit. We arc obliged to treat a iioek as a 

 unit in many respects, bat the flock is not a unit. It is a number of in- 

 dividuals differing from each other in specific merit. No man denies 

 that one flock of hens will average a great many more eggs than another 

 flock of equal size and maintained equally as well. This of itself, with 

 no other evidence, shows that the same differences in performance may 

 exist between individuals in the same flock. 



What this reasoning suggests the individual record proves, thus es- 

 tablishing the fact beyond question. 



One condition that makes it so difficult for the poultry student to get 

 exact information is due to a peculiarity of the American people. AVe 

 are great experimenters. Every Tom, Dick and Harry is an original 

 genius — in his own mind. We read, study, think and experiment 

 superficially; or deliberately copy from someone else, thinking that the 

 country is so large it will never be found out. This is a big country 

 geographically, but electricity and steam bring us pretty close together 

 after all. 



Our markets are glutted with incomplete inventions and compounds : 

 our patent office shelves are groaning under a load of experimental 

 folly; our people make experiments and draw conclusions therefrom 

 when the nature of the experiment precludes any possibility of its prov- 

 ing anything but its own weakness. 



Some of our writers in all kinds of literature are continually discover- 

 ing something new to them, but obsolete to the informed, and burst out 

 with a lot of old misinformation dressed in new garments. 



The history of the trap-nest idea is replete with illustrations of this 

 practice. 



The advertising and press notices of the pioneer promoter of a record 

 nest stimulated imitation, investigation, theft, and honest invention, 

 just the same as do all successes, or apparent successes. 



The crudest nest trap is a wonderful thing to the enthusiastic poultry 

 keeper who tries it for the first time, and a very impracticable thing to 

 experience. So those first crude traps and their later imitations, now 

 obsolete as far as practical trap-nest work is concerned, are still pro- 

 ducing misinformation regarding the trap-nest idea that varies in 

 character according to the point of view of the observer. 



One prominent writer wrote a very wise criticism of trap nests in 

 general. Fie had never had the opportunity to see or use a practical 

 trap-nest 'equipment, and he had never seen any one who had. Thus 

 it is that premature wisdom makes itself utterly absurd at times. 

 People arc likely to endorse or condemn what does not exist if they 

 mimic all thev read or hear. 



