POULTRY. 103 



POULTRY. 

 WORCESTER. 



LFrom the Report of the Committee.] 



The committee consider the raising and keeping of fowls, 

 when well understood, when those fowls are intelligently- 

 managed, one of the most important and profitable branches 

 of farming; and we have never known an instance, where 

 fowls were carefully and well managed, that they did not 

 pay a large profit. Take, for example, the breeding and rais- 

 ing of pure-blood, or fancy fowls. It was thought by many, 

 fifteen years ago, that the " hen-fever," as people termed it, 

 would have its run, would soon die out, and that would be 

 the end of it, for a while at least. Grave and sober farmers, 

 and shrewd merchants, and, in fact, many people in society, 

 laughed at the idea of paying a dollar per dozen for eggs 

 for hatching. " Why," they would say (and your committee 

 have heard this hundreds of times), " there never was a 

 hen's egg worth more than from one to two cents, — what 

 it is worth for food." 



One Burnham, after making quite a little fortune himself 

 in fancy fowls, wrote a book representing the fever as about 

 at an end, and exposing, as he thought, some of the tricks of 

 the trade ; and, to amuse his readers, he represents Cochin 

 fowls looking into attic-windows while standing on the 

 ground ; and on one page you will find a huge cut of a cock, 

 with feathers growing the wrong way, which he names the 

 " Butherum Pootherum." But notwithstanding those proph- 

 ecies, and the ridicule that fancy-fowl breeding then received, 

 the fever, as they then termed it, has continued to run, and 

 is liable to run for aught we know, with some variations, for 

 the next century. Never has there been a deeper interest 

 manifested in the breeding of fancy fowls, hens, pigeons, 



