n trifling details of plumage,
there was the closest accordance. Altogether it was a marvellous sight to
compare this bird first with _G. bankiva_, and then with its father, the
glossy green-black Spanish cock, and with its diminutive mother, the white
Silk hen. This case of reversion is the more extraordinary as the Spanish
breed has long been known to breed true, and no instance is on record of
its throwing a single red feather. The Silk hen likewise breeds true, and
is believed to be ancient, for Aldrovandi, before 1600, alludes probably to
this breed, and describes it as covered with wool. It is so peculiar in
many characters that some writers have considered it as specifically
distinct; yet, as we now see, when crossed with the Spanish fowl, it yields
offspring closely resembling the wild _G. bankiva_.

Mr. Tegetmeier has been so kind as to repeat, at my request, the cross
between a Spanish cock and Silk hen, and he obtained similar results; for
he thus raised, besides a black hen, seven cocks, all of which were
dark-bodied with more or less orange-red hackles. In the ensuing year he
paired the black hen with one of her brothers, and raised three young
cocks, all coloured like their father, and a black hen mottled with white.

The hens from the six above-described crosses showed hardly any tendency to
revert to the mottled-brown plumage of the female _G. bankiva_: one hen,
however, from the white Cochin, which was at first coal-black, became
slightly brown or sooty. Several hens, which were for a long time
snow-white, acquired as they grew old a few black feathers. A hen from the
white Game, which was for a long time entirely black glossed with green,
when two years old had some of the primary wing-feather greyish-white, and
a multitude of feathers over her body {243} narrowly and symmetrically
tipped or laced with white. I had expected that some of the chickens whilst
covered with down would have assumed the longitudinal stripes so general
with gallinaceous birds; but this did not occur in a single instance. Two
or three alone were reddish-brown about their heads. I was unfortunate in
losing nearly all the white chickens from the first crosses; so that black
prevailed with the grandchildren; but they were much diversified in colour,
some being sooty, others mottled, and one blackish chicken had its feathers
oddly tipped and barred with brown.

I will here add a few miscellaneous facts connected with reversion, and