Uniting the blacks and black-and-reds (since red appears only in one sex and often not until late in life) we find the following relation between the calculated and the observed proportions in 86 offspring: Calculated, black 65, buff 16, white 5; observed, black 61, buff 17, white 8.
In still another pen (848) the F2 hybrids were mated to a Buff Cochin. Only 21 chicks were raised. Expectation is, black 10.4, buff 5.2, white 5.2. Actually there were obtained, black 7, buff 10, white 4. Half of the calculated blacks are really heterozygous in both black and buff; so expectation is a little uncertain, and probably should be given as something under 10.4. Also, on account of small numbers, a close agreement is not to be expected; but calculation and observation are at least of the same order.
CHAPTER XI.
INHERITANCE OF BLUE COLOR, SPANGLING, AND BARRING.
A. BLUE COLOR.
Color-patterns are generalized, like the barring, spangling, and "blueing"; or localized, like the wing-bar or hackle and saddle lacing. We have to consider at present the method of inheritance of the former of these kinds of color patterns. As is well known (Bateson, Saunders, and Punnett, 1902, 1903), the Blue or Andalusian fowl is a heterozygote and, as such, produces white gametes and also black gametes.[10] The "blue" is, indeed, a fine mosaic of white and black. The barbules of a blue feather are seen to be finely barred with alternating pigmented and unpigmented zones. The pigment consists of the ordinary melanic granules of a dark sepia color.
My original blues arose (in pen 502) from a White Leghorn hen B (recognized as heterozygous but of unknown origin), mated to a black Minorca. These blues are referred to in my 1906 report. They were both females and were mated (in pen 636) to a white cock (No. 340) similarly derived. Of 49 offspring, 11, or over 22 per cent, were black and 78 per cent either pure white (35 per cent of all), white with black specks (22.5 per cent) or white-and-black mosaic, i. e., blue (20.4 per cent), but the latter were very variable in the quality of the blue. Let us designate the whitening factor of the White Leghorn by W (its absence w, resulting in black) and the blueing by M (its absence by m). Then, assuming that the blue females produce germ-cells MW, Mw, mW, mw, in equal numbers, and that the white male produces the same, we may expect in 16 F2 offspring the combinations shown in table 64.
Table 64.—Combinations in zygotes of the second hybrid generation of the blue strain.
| M2W2 1 white. | MmW2 2 white. | m2W2 1 white. |
| M2Ww 2 blue. | MmWw 4 white. | m2Ww 2 white. |
| M2W2 1 black. | Mmw2 2 black. | m2w2 1 black. |
| Totals: White ten-sixteenths; black four-sixteenths; blue two-sixteenths. | ||
The relation between the calculated and the actual percentages is as follows: