Brahmas. 
131 
mottled with white is allowable ; the thighs and fluff also black, but sometimes slightly ticked with white. 
The shank and toe feathering should be black, but if the breast is ticked, or mottled with white, this is also 
allowable in the leg feathering. Hen. — Head white, or a dusky white, neck hackle white, with a distinct and 
well-defined stripe of black down the centre of each feather ; or, if the hackle feathers are .slightly pencilled 
up from the shoulders, this is allowable. Breast, wings, back, and cushion a good steel grey, each feather, 
including the leg feathering, beautifully pencilled with a darker shade ; the tail feathers very dark, almost 
black, the top pair being edged with grey on the upper edges. In breeding the Dark Cockerels, a cock 
should be selected as black in the breast as possible, mated with Standard coloured hens. From this mating, 
if the strain is to be relied on, the cockerels will come uniformly good, and possibly some good, though, 
perhaps, a trifle dark pullets ; but it is in breeding the Silver Show Pullets of this variety that the greatest 
difficulty is experienced— that is, to produce the beautiful silvery grey ground colour of the plumage 
with uniform and accurate pencillings. In order to form a strain for Silver Pullet breeding, it is 
absolutely necessary to first secure a cock or cockerel bred from a pullet strain, and at least one 
hen almost perfect in markings and colour. The cock to head the pen should be lightly laced with 
white on the breast, body, legs, feet and fluff feathering, the rest of the feather being as black as possible, 
or a bird which shows small white spots at the end of each feather on the breast and fluff. The neck 
Fig. 62.— Faulty Cushion Feather of Fig. 63.— Faulty Hackle Feather of 
Dark Brahma Pullet. Dark Brahma Pullet. 
and saddle hackles of either should be well striped with narrow black stripes. (See Figs. 60 and 61.) The 
back and shoulders should be as clear of other colour than black and white as can be procured, but if 
these feathers are at all pencilled with black and white so much the better. The feathers at the base of the 
neck between the shoulders on the back should also be dense black, edged with white. The hens to mate 
with a bird of this description should be sound and uniform in colour, well marked, and as good on throat 
and breast as possible. In breeding the pullets especially it is very important to avoid a sudden cross, the 
invariable result, if the latter plan is followed, being to produce pullets patchy in ground colour and 
markings, as in Figs. 62 and 63. To breed the other recognised colours, or, in other words, various shades 
.of the one colour, such as blue grey or steel grey, a cock should be selected a shade darker than the one 
used for Silvers, and with broader stripes in his neck and saddle hackles ; but it must be remembered bv the 
beginner that it is not every cock that happens to be laced on the breast and fluff (See Fig. 64) that can 
be depended upon as a high-class pullet breeder. He may have been produced from a badly-mated cock- 
breeding pen, and the use of such a bird iox pullet breeding would court disaster. It is, therefore, safe to 
assume the main points in pullet-breeding cocks are not such as can be outwardly seen, but rather that these 
desired qualities are in the blood of the bird, and in that of his ancestors for many generations, and on both 
