National Agricultural Library

The Plymouth Rocks: Barred, White, and Buff. Their Practical Qualities, The Standard Requirements, How to Judge Them, How to Breed and Mate for Best Results

Reliable Poultry Journal Publishing Company. Quincy, IL

The interest in Plymouth Rocks is almost worldwide; no other fancy fowl has awakened so much enthusiasm. To perfect and beautify it, more continuous hard labor has been performed and more profound study given than has ever fallen to the lot of any other variety of fancy fowls. Theories have been evolved and almost as often exploded. Yet, one point seems to have been lost sight of, and that is the necessity of learning the history of the origin and early breeding of this fowl, which enjoys the greatest popularity from shore to shore and from bay to gulf.

Among the many that engage in the several branches of poultry work, the fancier is certainly the most studious and reflective, as well as the most progressive and enterprising. It is he, if any one, whom we should expect to delve into the mystery of the past, and solye the alt-perplexing question. But the fact is, that the fancier has become absorbed in one idea, and that is the common but abstruse conundrum, " How am I to beat the other fellow? "

The great interests at stake, the strong rivalry of the past few years, have indeed made it a matter of intense and continuous effort to be in the van among breeders of Barred Plymouth Rocks. Fanciers and breeders have consequently been content to accept what has been prepared for them rather than to attempt the preparation of anything in the way of a history of the early Plymouth Rocks. In a word, they prefer to make modern rather than to learn ancient history. Still, it is well to ascertain the truth of these matters, while several of those who originated and developed the early strains are yet among the living.