rent, Dixon); by Dorkings; by the partridge
and grouse-coloured sub-breeds of Cochins (Brent), but not, as we have
seen, by all the other sub-breeds; by the pheasant-Malay (Dixon), but
apparently not (at which I am much surprised) by other Malays. The
following breeds and sub-breeds are barely, or not at all,
longitudinally striped; viz. gold and silver pencilled Hamburghs, which
can hardly be distinguished from each other (Brent) in the down, both
having a few {250} dark spots on the head and rump, with occasionally a
longitudinal stripe (Dixon) on the back of the neck. I have seen only
one chicken of the silver-spangled Hamburgh, and this was obscurely
striped along the back. Gold-spangled Polish chickens (Tegetmeier) are
of a warm russet brown; and silver-spangled Polish chickens are grey,
sometimes (Dixon) with dashes of ochre on the head, wings, and breast.
Cuckoo and blue-dun fowls (Dixon) are grey in the down. The chickens of
Sebright Bantams (Dixon) are uniformly dark brown, whilst those of the
brown-breasted red Game Bantam are black, with some white on the throat
and breast. From these facts we see that the chickens of the different
breeds, and even of the same main breed, differ much in their downy
plumage; and, although longitudinal stripes characterise the young of
all wild gallinaceous birds, they disappear in several domestic breeds.
Perhaps it may be accepted as a general rule that the more the adult
plumage differs from that of the adult _G. bankiva,_ the more
completely the chickens have lost their proper stripes.

With respect to the period of life at which the characters proper to each
breed first appear, it is obvious that such structures as additional toes
must be formed long before birth. In Polish fowls, the extraordinary
protuberance of the anterior part of the skull is well developed before the
chickens come out of the egg;[400] but the crest, which is supported on the
protuberance, is at first feebly developed, nor does it attain its full
size until the second year. The Spanish cock is pre-eminent for his
magnificent comb, and this is developed at an unusually early age; so that
the young males can be distinguished from the females when only a few weeks
old, and therefore earlier than in other breeds; they likewise crow very
early, namely, when about six weeks old. In the Dutch sub-breed of the
Spanish fowl t