No. 614] THE BLUE AND ALU SI AN 



97 



pigment are a glossy black, apparently a secondary sexual 

 characteristic. The blue appearance is due to the distri- 

 bution and arrangement of the pigment granules in the 

 feather structure, as will be described later. The fact 

 that the splashed birds are splashed with blue (with the 

 exception noted above) rather than black is important 

 and appears not to have been noted, or at least not em- 

 phasized, by previous writers. 



As an example, Punnett (1911, p. 70), in diseussiim- the 

 breeding behavior of the blue Andalusian, says: 1 'It 

 always throws 'wasters' of two kinds, viz., blacks, and 

 whites splashed ivith black" (italics mine). In the ma- 

 terial which has come under my observation, consisting of 

 upwards of one hundred birds in the unrelated flocks of 

 the poultry departments of Kansas State Agricultural 

 College and the University of Wisconsin, no individual 

 has been noted in which the pigmented areas were not dis- 

 tinctly bluish-gray, except that those pigmented feathers 

 or parts of feathers appearing in the hackle, back, and 

 saddle of the male were glossy black. These sections, it 

 should be clearly understood, are also glossy black in the 

 blue Andalusian male. There are occasionally flecks or 

 small spots of black, appearing in the blue-gray feathers, 

 and even in the white feathers of the blue-splashed birds. 

 This is also true of the blues and, indeed, is not a rare 

 occurrence in both dominant and recessive white races of 

 other breeds. It does not in the least affect the fact that, 

 in the material so far observed, the white birds have been 

 splashed with bluish-gray rather than black in those sec- 

 tions where the blue Andalusian is also blue. This con- 

 clusion is borne out by the results of a microscopic ex- 

 amination. 



In an effort to determine the fundamental differences 

 between the three Andalusian phenotypes, a careful study 

 of feathers from numerous individuals of each phenotype 

 was made. A detailed account of the results of the study 

 will be published in a later paper. For present purposes 

 a short account of the most obvious differences will serve. 



