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Show I POULTRY I REVERSIQNAL HEREDITY. I 4 C. S. Gorline. t I Written for 'the "Dcscrct Farmer?, " T J There is a lr.w of transmission ipv I breeding that is hardly considered worthy of serious consideration by many skillfull breeders and yet it has I often eauscu no end of bother to the map who is endeavoring to reproduce certain characteristics less certain pc-j pc-j culiaritics. For instance, in one case I we knew a breeder of Brown Lcg-Ij Lcg-Ij horns who had taken great care in Hi double mating to produce a. line of H standard excellence and had succccd-H succccd-H cd in obtaining the desired color, but b his birds were faulty in comb. This I, was before the standard was changed I and although six points in the comb Ij were adui!ssablc our friend admired I and preferred but five and sought to I; accomplish that end. In time he pro-Hi pro-Hi duccd a fine cockerel with the desired H five point comb and he resolved to If fix that peculiarity in all succeeding II lrogcuy, and he did, but he also fixed II another peculiarity that showed itscif II in many generations in the females II also, much to his chagrin, and tint I! was a most decided fork in the rear of It the blade. From sire to son and on I; through several generations this pc I; culiaxity was reproduced with an ck I' 1 1 1 1 1 ' actness that became a positive mark. There is a fundamental principle now generally recognized, "predominant characteristics of the sires arc most often transmitted to the female progeny, pro-geny, while those of the darra arc reproduced re-produced in the male dcsccndcnts," but this law applies more often in cross-heredity. It is very simple, too, and so easy to accept the trite saw that like will produce like and to rest hopefully in the belief thrt the progenitor pro-genitor will be produced in the progeny pro-geny in a second edition, but right there is where rcvcrsional heredity plays havoc with our theory, for be it known Mr. Breeder, there arc two progenitors if you please, and by the law of direct heredity the peculiarities peculiari-ties of both sire and dam arc transmitted trans-mitted to the offspring. Now, in the case at hand, the fork in the blade was transmitted to the female progeny pro-geny as well as the male and was painfully, transmitted for several generations1 gen-erations1 and would probably have been so portrayed to the end of time, but our friend was well aware of another an-other principle involved which is t the effect that the continuous repcti-tion repcti-tion of a structural change Will surely sure-ly effect an organic modification and the application of a pair of scissors to the rear of the blade in those youngsters of each succeeding gener- ation finallyMproduc.cd'r-abladel"in!SUc cocding generations that-was standard" m type. We know of jnorc than 6nst breeder who has accomplished the. . . ; i scciningly impossible by the applied tion of this principle. Environments has much to do doubtless in the traiis? mission of acquired peculiarities in rcvcrsional heredity until such time as those peculiarities become fixed Frequently a peculiarity of the dam will be tiansmittcd to daughter and on down the female line for many generations while a certain characteristic character-istic of the sire will be transmitted to the male line from the same original origi-nal mating from whence the female line sprang, hence the difficulty gen crally encountered in blending individual indi-vidual characteristics from any one mating. Experience has shown repeatedly re-peatedly that only care in selection of the individuals in a mating will produce results that will blend dc-' sired characteristics in the progeny even with the aid of strenuous measures meas-ures as noted above, for undesirable characteristics arc more easily established estab-lished in the offspring than those thn; arc desired and by direct heredity they may become almost impossible, to eradicate except by strenuous! measures and the most rigid care tin .the selection of the individual. 'If this care in selection be rigidly followed fol-lowed year after year, much may be done in time to eradicate in a large, measure, if not entirely so, the uiw desirable peculiarities preserved a;id transmitted by heredity. The prdb- lem of heredity has in the past been regarded as incapable of solution ljut reasoning supported by observation and an intelligent understanding jof the laws of breeding will eventually make clear a chapter in the Book of Nature which has heretofore be,cn unintelligible. |