PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
combs and Black and White Leghorns are of 
course either the results of admixture with, or 
sports of the ancient type of the race,—and that 
type seems to be the brown Leghorn,” 
It would be still more correct to say the type 
is that of the progenitors of the race, for the 
black-red colors of the Brown Leghorn male 
very closely resemble the black-red colors of 
the male Gallus bankiva, and the persistence of 
these color-markings in the common fowls of 
Italy is an illustration of the persistence of race 
characteristics, as well as of reversion towards 
the original ancestral type. This result is pre¬ 
cisely what would be expected from centuries 
tioned and extremely broody “Asiatics.” 
If we suppose that quantity and quality of 
meat were preferred to a great egg product we 
would expect just such a development of the 
meat producing qualities as those Asiatic fowls 
possess. Some of us can remember the great 
yellow Shanghais and Grey Chittagongs of fifty 
or sixty years ago; so tall that, while standing 
on the floor beside it, they could eat corn off the 
top of a barrel that was standing on end; cock 
birds of the descendants of those varieties have 
reached seventeen or eighteen pounds weight. 
It is quite unnecessary for us to enter into the 
much discussed question of whether the Chitta_ 
Light Brahmas. Presented to Her Majesty, Oueen Victoria, by Mr. Geo. P. Burnham, in 1852. 
Reproduced from Tegetmeier’s Poultry Book. 
of promiscuous interbreeding, just the result 
that we find in the common Italian fowls de¬ 
scribed above and from which our finely bred 
Leghorns have been developed. 
Mr. Darwin tells us the domesticated fowl is 
said to have been introduced from the west into 
China about 1400 B. C., and we see in the de¬ 
scendants of those fowls a development in a 
decidedly different direction from that taken by 
the domesticated fowls in Europe and North 
Africa. Instead of the small, non-sitting, in¬ 
tensely nervous and active “Mediterraneans” 
we find the large, clumsy, placid-disposi- 
gongs were of Chinese or Indian origin, it is 
sufficient for our purpose to know that both the 
Chittagongs and Shanghais were of the same 
great Asiatic race, and that our Cochins and 
Brahmas have been developed from them. We 
in America received the ancestors of our Cochins 
and Brahmas from Asia, the ancestors of our 
Leghorns from Italy, and from Spain and the 
countries which were for centuries dominated 
by Spain the other “Mediterranean” varieties; 
and from the mixing of these races has been 
evolved our popular American varieties, the 
Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes. 
14 
