240 



FOWLS. 



Chap. VII. 



white Cochins, as they come to maturity, often assume a yel- 

 lowish or saffron tinge ; and the longer neck hackles of black 

 bantam cocks, 28 when two or three years old, not uncommonly 

 become ruddy ; these latter bantams occasionally " even moult 

 brassy winged, or actually red shouldered." So that in these 

 several cases we see a plain tendency to reversion to the hues 

 of Gr. bankiva, even during the lifetime of the individual bird. 

 With Spanish, Polish, pencilled Hamburgh, silver-spangled 

 Hamburgh fowls, and with some other less common breeds, I 

 have never heard of a black-breasted red bird having appeared. 



From my experience with pigeons, I made the following 

 crosses. I first killed all my own poultry, no others living near 

 my house, and then procured, by Mr. Tegetmeier's assistance, 

 a first-rate black Spanish cock, and hens of the following pure 

 breeds, — white Game, white Cochin, silver-spangled Polish, 

 silver-spangled Hamburgh, silver-pencilled Hamburgh, and 

 white Silk. In none of these breeds is there a trace of red, nor 

 when kept pure have I ever heard of the appearance of a red 

 feather ; though such an occurrence would perhaps not be very 

 improbable with white Games and white Cochins. Of the many 

 chickens reared from the above six crosses the majority were 

 black, both in the down and in the first plumage ; some were 

 white, and a very few were mottled black and white. In one 

 lot of eleven mixed eggs from the white Game and white 

 Cochin by the black Spanish cock, seven of the chickens were 

 white, and only four black : I mention this fact to show that 

 whiteness of plumage is strongly inherited, and that the belief 

 in the prepotent power in the male to transmit his colour is 

 not always correct. The chickens were hatched in the spring, 

 and in the latter part of August several of the young cocks 

 began to exhibit a change, which with some of them increased 

 during the following years. Thus a young male bird from the 

 silver-spangled Polish hen was in its first plumage coal-black, 

 and combined in its comb, crest, wattle, and beard, the characters 

 of both parents ; but when two years old the secondary wing- 

 feathers became largely and symmetrically marked with white, 

 and, wherever in Gr. bankiva the hackles are red, they were 

 in this bird greenish-black along the shaft, narrowly bordered 



28 Mr. Hewitt, in < The Poultry Book/ by W. B. Tegetmeier, 1866, p. 248. 



