94 
The Australasian Book of Poultry. 
an occasional Silver Birchen Cockerel will be produced. We used the Silver Grey cross once only, breeding 
each year back to the pure Brown Red, but this persistency of the white pigment colour proved most difficult 
to eradicate. The red pigment is the most difficult of all to destroy, and will invariably spread itself 
throughout the entire plumage in various modifications of its own colour, thus offering the greatest obstacles 
to breeding the various mixed colour races to standard points. It will thus be seen that to produce stock in 
which the red pigment is not clearly and strongly defined, being more of a yellow or buff, as in the Buff 
Orpington, Buff Wyandotte, or Buff Cochin, great care must be exercised in mating up the breeding stock, 
and it is well at all times to have rather a predominance of colour on one side or other of the stock birds to 
neutralise the natural tendency to reversion either to the white patches, or mealiness, or black ticking which 
will certainly assert itself if not fully guarded against ; and, again, in breeding any of the varieties which have 
a blue ground colour, with black barrings or markings, it is much easier to retain the black markings than 
the blue ground colour, the latter having a natural tendency to revert to white, so that to develop and retain 
the blue ground colour each successive generation recour.se must be made to a shade darker ground colour 
in the stock bird on one side than that required in the progeny. 
