From W. B. Tegetmeier [28 May 1861]1
I believe that as a general rule a hen when with egg will yield to any cock I do not think she refuses (as with pigeons) when she requires impregnating
You can make tame hens squat to your hand by scratching the scapular region as with the feet of a cock
I had a tame cochin hen who used to squat to any thing that touched her back, much to the annoyance of my wife the contact of whose dress often produced the movement.
My hen cock was victor always and some of the hens constantly kept with him—a very handsome full feathered bird being in the same yard.— I have never heard that game cocks after being trimmed for fighting were not equal favorites with the hens
In fact strong cocks make the hens yield by stamping alternately with each foot and sometimes will tear open the side with the spur if the foot slips between the hens wing and her body.
The hens impregnated by the hen tailed game cock lay very fertile eggs.— I have just looked at two settings and found all the 21 eggs fertilized—so that impregnation must have been very effectually performed.2
CD annotations
Footnotes
Summary
[Queries in CD’s hand answered on same pages by WBT.] Sexual selection of fowls; role of beauty in cocks.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3166
- From
- William Bernhard Tegetmeier
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 84.1: 144
- Physical description
- inc ††
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3166,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3166.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9