156 LOTSY AND KUIPER, A PRELIM. STATEMENT OF THE RESULTS OF MR, 
‘Pigmentation of the skin. 
The skin of our silkies was very dark blue (nearly black). The 
-colour of the comb and gills was dark blue-red. 
The F, in both crosses was strictly intermediate. Nevertheless 
there was a rather wide variation in the skin colour even in Fy 
birds, e.g. in exp. 413 most birds are described, skin light blue, but 
in 413.9 we find skin darkblue. Nos. 413.13 and 413.14 had the 
-skin nearly white and no. 413.12 yellowish green. 
In the birds whose skin appeared nearly white the slight pig- 
mentation could be shown much better in the fowls while plucked. 
‘The degree of pigmentation of the skin corresponds always with 
the more or less blue red colour of comb and gills. 
In F,’s the skin colour of both parents reappeared. 
Although between the ,white” skin of the Jungle fowl and the 
black” of the Silky many shades of colour seemed to exist from 
nearly white to dark blue we were not able to test the skin colour 
in a really scientific way (e. 6. by the tintometer) and therefore 
we must content ourselves with the assumption of three inter- 
mediates light blue, blue and dark blue. . 
As may be seen from the tables, there was not the slightest 
‘indication in our experiments of a sexlimited inheritance of the 
skin colour, as BATESON and PUNNETT found in their crosses of 
brown Leghorn and Silky. In Fy of Bankiva 2 X Silky ¢ the skin- 
colour was lightblue in males and females of the first cross (exp. 
414) in those of the second one the pigmentation fluctuated from 
light blue to dark blue both in cocks and hens. 
The Fy was bred only from the pen 414 with light blue skin. 
Here all shades of colour appeared both in cocks and hens, but 
the results are so complicated that it would be useless to describe 
them in any detail. 
In the Fy bred from Silky hen with Bankiva cock the cocks had 
a slight pigmentation while a part of the hens had a slight, the 
other part a well developped pigmentation. |: 
It should be noticed that the skincolour‘of Bankiva fowl has a 
‘slight blue tinge, in comparison with white Leghorn, Partridge 
‘Wyandotte etc. B 
Perhaps this explains the difference between BATESON and 
JPUNNEIT's results and ours. CUNNINGHAM’S experiments with Silky 

