TRADE IN PURE-BRED POULTRY AND EGGS 577 



to poultry recognize beauty, in its way, as serviceable as utility, and 

 consider some combination of the two desirable. 



Values in pure-bred poultry and eggs. Three kinds of value are 

 distinguished in high-class stock : ( i ) food, or consumptive, value ; 

 (2) breeding, ox productive, value ; and (3) exhibition, or (esthetic, 

 value. It is usual to consider food values as strictly real values, 

 and the others as in a measure fictitious, and therefore less stable. 

 Both views are at fault. 



The food value of poultry and eggs as indicated in the price 

 may be in part an aesthetic value. When a consumer pays a pre- 

 mium for white eggs over brown, or vice versa, the difference in 

 price represents what he is willing to pay to gratify a fancy (de- 

 veloped by custom) for eggs with shells of a particular color. There 

 is no difference in the quality of the eggs. When he pays a pre- 

 mium for a particular color of skin in poultry, that premium repre- 

 sents not value in the poultry, but preference or prejudice, 

 according to the point of view. When he pays twice as much per 

 pound for a squab broiler as for a nice fowl (or buys a green duck), 

 he is not buying on a basis of actual nutritive value, but catering 

 to his appreciation of beauty through the sense of taste and sight, 

 just as in paying a high price for a bird externally beautiful he 

 caters to his appreciation of beauty perceived by the eye alone. 



Recognition of the aesthetic element in what are commonly con- 

 sidered strictly economic values enables us to better apprehend the 

 substantial nature of aesthetic values. The physical needs of man 

 are his primary needs ; normally they must be satisfied first. But 

 with the physical wants satisfied, his mental and spiritual nature 

 as insistently craves beauty. Capacity to enjoy beauty, and desire 

 to possess what is rare, lead men, according to their means, to 

 willingly pay much more for a beautiful object or creature than for 

 an equally useful one lacking that quality. The laws of supply and 

 demand regulate the prices of exhibition poultry as constantly as 

 they do the prices of market poultry. Esthetic value in the living 

 bird is relatively greater than aesthetic value in table poultry and 

 eggs, not only because it is more durable in the individual but 

 because it may be multiplied through the individual. Even in its 

 lowest grade of excellence the pure-bred bird is more valuable than 

 the mongrel, because through it may be reproduced more certainly 



