Studies on the relation of gonadic structure to plumage characterisation in the domestic fowl.—III. The laying hen with cock's plumage

Abstract

Among the many fowls exhibiting abnormality of the sex characters which have been presented to this department by breeders sympathetic to the view that a study of the abnormal may lead to a better understanding of the normal processes of development and maintenance, have been two which were in every way similar to the cock which, in 1474, was sentenced by the magistrates of Basle to be burned at the stake “ for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg.” It is recorded that the executioner on cutting open this cock found three more eggs within him, but this has been doubted by some, who have held that it was impossible and absurd, and that these eggs were not formed by nature, but were created by the fevered imagination of the superstitious. Such was the fate of the sexually abnormal even up to the year 1730. But times have changed, and to-day, instead of being burned at the stake, the offender is called upon to make its contribution to our knowledge of the sex physiology of the fowl. The bird (No. 2) now to be described, then a year-old Rhode Island Red, was sent to this department because it was thought to be a cock which laid eggs. It certainly at that time had the plumage characteristic of the male of the breed, was laying actively, and had well developed spurs. But it did not crow ; it did not exhibit the male behaviour, but behaved as a female ; normal cocks did not recognise it as a male, nor did the hens ; its head furnishings were typically female in their size (save about the time of the moult, when they shrank until they were as those of a capon) (see Plate 39).