29-3-1989

Dear Bill,

Thank you very much for your letter received a couple of weeks ago, and especially for the excellent news that your sight is improving slow steady progress is probably the best way in the long run, the fable of the tortoise and the hare!! Your amateur radio contacts must be a great source of contact and help get you outside of yourself.

On Modern Game Standards, some of the later accepted standards on blue variations are not in the 1982 edition, but have been accepted by the Poultry Club of Great Britain in the form I sent you. Therefore when the next version takes place they will be incorporated unless further change takes place.

No alteration to the OEG standard has been made since the 1982 edition, but we have a curious situation with OEG in that ANY COLOUR is standardised without specific description and shown under AOC. In fact a local fancier has won the Championship 3 times in 6 years of the OEG show with colours no one has been able to describe.

A curious situation also arises in that in the standard, and in popularity, OEG large fowl colours are non popular in large fowl. The large OEG colours are more closely related to the Modern Game Bantam colours, giving credence to the theory that the original English Game had their legs sketched  to become Exhibition Game and later Modern Game, with new colours being developed on the old type to produce OEG bantams.

I am at present trying to re-construct the laced-tailed lacing of a Sebright from the F2 of two genotypically established breeds, the S.S. Hamburg E co⁺ (Db - Ml - Pg) and the Andalusian E Co (db⁺ - Ml - Pg). The F2 is homozygous for E Ml Pg and segregates only at the Co and Db, so the analysis is quite simple. But if, as appears most likely, the genotype of the Sebright is E Co (Db - Ml - Pg). then your historical research will show the supposed synthesis as recorded in Fred Jeffrey is correct. Interesting!!

Best wishes. Yours,