Poultry Notebooks : Poultry breeding notebook '98' [1898]

Poultry Notebooks

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This is the first of a series of laboratory notebooks recording Bateson and Punnett’s experiments in poultry breeding. It begins with a list of the original birds used for breeding, and an index of where they appear later in the book [<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(5);return false;'>page 1r</a>]. From these stocks there seem to be four breeding lines labelled A, B, C and D, with individual progeny from each line given a number e.g. D 48.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The histories of the founding birds are recorded, along with details of their physical characteristics and summaries of chicks hatched alive. These are followed by notes on each chick: their colour, comb, weight and other physical characteristics (e.g. crooked feet), state of health, cause of death, etc. Occasional sketches of heads or combs of birds are included [pp. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(26);return false;'>18v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(52);return false;'>41v</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(53);return false;'>42</a>, <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(131);return false;'>110v</a>]. An entry dated Christmas Eve 1898 records that one bird was ‘killed and eaten’ [<a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(9);return false;'>page 4</a>].</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The notebooks at <a href='/view/MS-ADD-10161-00001-00001-00002/'> (MS Add.10161/1/1/2)</a> - <a href='/view/MS-ADD-10161-00001-00001-00004/3'> (MS Add.10161/1/1/4)</a> continue the record of these breeding lines.</p>