Judging live stock is not a matter of simple comparisons of weights and dimensions. The personal opinions of the judge necessarily affect his decisions, and as the opinions of men differ, their judgments will vary. A judge is often in doubt as to which of two or more birds is (all things considered) the better specimen, but he must make his decision on the birds as they appear to him at the time, and that decision must stand for that competition. No one, no matter how well he may know the requirements of the standard for a variety and the methods of applying it, can discover by a study of a class of birds all of the judge's reasons for his decisions; but any one who will keep in mind and try to apply a few simple, general rules can look over a variety that he has never seen before, and of which he may not know the name, and (unless the judge has been very erratic in his decisions) can see why most of the awards in a small class of varied quality have been made. These rules are: 1. The character or characters that most conspicuously distinguish a type are given most consideration in judging. 2. Color of plumage is given more consideration than shape, unless some shape character is unusually striking. 3. Quality in color of plumage consists in evenness and purity of shade in solid-colored specimens, and in sound colors and distinctness of the pattern in party-colored specimens. 4. The shape of extraordinary superficial shape characters, such as crests, very large combs, heavy foot-feathering, etc., is usually given as much consideration as color. The first rule really includes all the others, and although this is not usually admitted by the exponents of current methods of judging live stock, in practice it is the fundamental rule in judging. One reason why people who have a little knowledge of standards for well-bred poultry, and of the methods of applying them, are almost always puzzled by the awards at poultry shows is because they try to analyze them in accordance with the commonly accepted theory of judging by points, which assigns definite numerical values to certain characters. This theory assumes that the judge, taking these values as a basis, computes the values of faults with mathematical accuracy. This is not possible where the computation is based upon an opinion. To illustrate the application of the rules given, let us apply them to some well-known varieties, taking first the Barred Plymouth Rock.