Much of the recent stimulus to the study of the Science of Breeding was occasioned by the discovery of Mendel’s Law.  Briefly, the law states that when two pure traits or characters are crossed, one dominates in the first generation of offspring—­the other remaining hidden or recessive.  Of the second generation, one-half the individuals are still mixed, bearing the dominant characteristic externally and the other hidden; one-fourth are pure dominants and one-fourth are pure recessives.  In future generations the mixed or hybrid individuals again give birth to mixed and pure types apportioned as before, thus continuing until all offspring become ultimately pure.  For illustration:  If rose and single comb chickens are crossed, rose combs are dominant.  The first generation will all have rose combs.  The second generation will have one-fourth single combs that will breed true, one-fourth rose combs that will breed rose combs only, and one-half that again will give all three types.

Mendel’s Law works all right in cases where pure unit characteristics are to be found.  For the great practical problems in inheritance, Mendel’s law is utterly hopeless.  The trouble is that the chief things with which we are concerned are not unit characteristics but are combinations of countless characteristics which cannot be seen or known, hence cannot be picked out.  Thus the tendency to revert to pure types is foiled by the constant recrossing of these types.

Mendel’s law is a scientific curiosity like the aeroplane.  It may some day be more than a curiosity, but both have tremendous odds to overcome before they supplant our present methods.

Prof.  C.B.  Davenport, of the Carnegie Institute, is working on experimental poultry breeding in its purely scientific sense.  His conclusions have been much criticised by poultry fanciers.  The truth of the matter is that the fancier fails to appreciate the spirit of pure science.  The scientist, enthused to find his white fowl re-occur after a generation of black ones, is wholly undisturbed by the fact that the white ones, if exhibited, might be taken for a Silver Spangled Hamburg.

Mendel’s law as yet offers little to the fancier and less to the commercial poultryman.  Its study is all right in its place, but its place is not on the poultry plant whose profits are to buy the baby a new dress.

Breeding for Egg Production.

Attempts to improve the egg-producing qualities of the hen date from the domestication of the hen, but it has only been within the last few years that rapid progress has been possible in this work.  The inability to determine the good layers has been the difficulty.