242 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



England Farmer." " Poultry," said this practical writer, " may 

 be consiflered as part of a husbandman's stock. But the keep- 

 ing of great numbers of dunghill fowls will not turn to his 

 advantage; as it is certain they will never indemnify him for 

 the corn and grain that are requisite for their support. Yet on 

 a farm a few of them may be useful, to pick up what would 

 otherwise be lost. And in this view they seem to be profitable 

 only a part of the year. If confined, they will not prosper, 

 though they have a yard of some extent; if not confined, they 

 will be mif-chievous to the garden and field." This is, perhaps, 

 true enough now. 



' But agriculture, like every thing else under the sway of hu- 

 manity, is suViject to a change of fashions, or rather notions. 

 When the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 ture was in the useful vigor of its youth, (as we are informed 

 by that Nestor of Massachusetts farmers, the Hon. Josiah 

 Quincy,) " the great criterion of a good farmer was the making 

 of good cider, and tlie process of making cider was one of the 

 most studied and elaborate of all subjects of the farmer's atten- 

 tion ; and in point of complexity, length and minuteness of care 

 and preparation, was but little inferior to the making of glass, 

 porcelain, or Java china." Where are the cider presses now ? 



Other matters were in turn made hobbies of by those self- 

 styled friends of agriculture, who are ever < aracolling around 

 the agricultural arena, blowing loudly on their own trumpets, 

 and often filling their pockets at the expense of those credulous 

 mortals who seek to avoid labor by finding the philosopher's 

 stone of rural profit. Merino sheep, China tree corn, Rohan 

 potatoes, Gama grass, and Morus Multicaulis, were each in turn 

 loudly extolled as speedy stepping-stones to agricultural wealth. 

 The "hen fever" followed then — what is to follow it? 



Raising fancy poultry is no new whim. Peacocks were so 

 esteemed by king Solomon that he had them brought him regu- 

 larly in his Tarsliish fleet; and we read in several old Roman 

 works of their pigeon houses and geese ponds, their ducks and 

 fatted capons. Queen Bess was famed for her well-stocked 

 poultry yard; and there is no 'account of a henery equal in 

 extent and magnificence to one erected fifty years ago by Lord 

 Penryhn, at his seat near Wilmington, Cheshire county, Eng- 

 land. But it was not until 1848 that the public were informed 



