HOUWINK’S EXPER. CONC. THE ORIGIN OF SOME DOMESTIC ANIMALS 271 
tint, the dull-black secondaries have a narrow, brown, frequently inter- 
rupted, outer border; the primaries with their reduced outer vane show 
rudiments of a similar brown border while their shafts are alternately. 
black and almost white e. g. grossly crossbarred. The purple tail coverts 
are cross-barred by alternating transverse dullblack stripes whiie a 
similar crossbarring can be seen on the tail-feathers themselves, when 
held at a certain angle to the iight. 
It is a great pity that we do not know to which race of poultry the 
mother of this cock, or its grandmother perhaps, belonged, as it is of 
course by no means sure that it is a bekissar e. g. a F, bird of the cross 
domestic poultry x varius, it may just as will be an F,, a backcross or 
any other segregate from a cross of some domestic strain with varius. 
The crosses with Gallus aeneus 26 314 
This cock 263.1 & was put to three silver partridge bantams 192.2 2 
192.3 © and 192.4 9, two of which 192.2 and 192.3 have been stuffed, so 
that we are sure that it really were silver partridges. This was done in 
the zoological gardens at Amsterdam and the resulting chicks were 
given to Mr. HouwINK who raised them to adult size and then gave 
them away or killed them, to make room for experiments of less un- 
certain ancestry. 
All chicks were born in 1914; of them we have the following records. 
F, silver partridge bantam $ x Gallus aeneus 3 
born 1914 at Amsterdam: 
"194.2 4 killed and stuffed. 
194.3 © killed and stuffed. 
194.4 & killed and stuffed. 
194.5 9 given away. 
194.6 killed and stuffed. 
194.7 & killed and stuffed. 
194.8 4 killed. 
194.9 Q killed. 
194.10 9 given away. 
194.11 9 given away. 
194.12 4 killed 
