During our work with pigeons we tried out a number of different varieties: Homers, Dragoons, Runt Dragoon crosses, Homer Runt crosses, Maltese Hens, and the various crosses with Runt Dragoons; also Carneaux. We were led to buy these fancy breeds through the stories of extreme prices paid for large squabs, and we bred some heavy weights only to find, from the commission man who made a specialty of these birds, that it was impossible to pay the price which such birds were really worth, as trade for this class was extremely limited. Very early in our experience we realized that the poultry side of our experiment was very much more to our liking and offered so much greater and more profitable outlook for our energies that we rang down the curtain on Squab raising--and turned our attention exclusively to the Hen. While our minds were still running in the line of poultry for market purposes we tried out the Black Orpingtons, the idea being that, on account of their size, they would make ideal roasting fowls. We found, however, that they were a very much inbred variety, and it was almost impossible to hatch the eggs. Out of one hundred eggs, for which we paid twenty dollars, eight chicks hatched, and these were not of sufficient vitality to live. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE FARM IN 1909] More Money in Eggs During all this time, however, we were studying the poultry question, and had arrived at the conclusion that there was more money in eggs, properly produced and marketed, than in any other branch. One of the difficulties we met with in our investigations was the fact that so many different writers had such a variety of ideas on the same subject, and practically no two of them agreed on any given part of poultry culture. What seemed to us even more confusing was that, in most cases, the writer summed up his article by contradicting everything he had said in the previous chapters. We were finally forced to the conclusion that the raising of poultry had not yet been reduced to a science, but was almost entirely made up of guesses. In our investigations, however, we found in the writings of the late Prof. Gowell, of Maine, an entirely different condition. He was the first man, so far as our observations went, who worked on the principle that effect followed cause, in poultry as in everything else. We studied his bulletins with great interest, and decided we would endeavor to prove that the same results gotten by him could be duplicated by others. Adopted White Leghorns We had also been studying the condition of the egg market, so far as New York and vicinity was concerned, and had found that this market paid a premium for a white shelled egg. This, then, was the determining factor in the selection of the breed of fowls, and after gathering all the information we could regarding birds which laid white eggs, we were satisfied, taking everything into consideration, that for an Egg Farm, the Single Comb White Leghorn, was the only fowl.