FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 225 



vastly less of brain and little of muscle, the birds are our superior in music, 

 motion, sight, smell, fidelity, and honesty. 



Nothing looks more comfortable ; nothing more beautifies and enlivens the 

 home of the farmer than a few select, -well-kept fowls. There are higher util- 

 ities than mere ministries to the purse and the stomach. In looking at such a 

 gem of perfection as a beautiful bird, base and groveling must be that soul that 

 cannot be lifted by the view higher than the thought of a baked fowl, a chicken 

 j)ie, or a boiled egg. The elaborate beauty so profusely lavished npon the bird 

 creation shows, beyond a doubt, that it was designed for soul food no less than to 

 gratify the palate, important as the latter may be. There are few creatures that 

 minister more to our comfort in sickness and in health than domestic poultry. 

 Considering how interesting and profitable its care, it is a little surprising that 

 so few young people make poultry a study. The solution may lie here, that 

 they were not early taught to look at the outward world as a great and beauti- 

 ful picture-book, ever changing the scene, yet never giving one view common- 

 place or dull; not taught to look at nature as their great and good-hearted 

 mother, ever at work to please good children. tShooting up the blade of grass, 

 opening the blossom bud, notching the tiny leaf and stirring it to music, form- 

 ing and tinting the fleecy cloud, and then blowing it away for others to come, 

 watching the tender plants and when thirsty distilling upon them the gentle and 

 refreshing rain which she holds in her leaden clouds, and then, as if never tired 

 of showing forms of beauty, spanning the heavens with a prismatic bow. An 

 education to see beauty and love in nature, may we not consider a prerequisite 

 to ^nd pleasure in and to successfully manage a poultry yard? The tender of 

 the birds must see in them a beauty, a loveliness, a charm ; must find in them 

 a pleasure ; must drink in their musical notes, their etherial language, indicative 

 of their condition and their wants, as an entertainment, the minstrelsy of the 

 home lawn. The farmer's "^poet laureate" is the bird. 



To make any business profitable it must be understood. To find money in 

 poultry, — and that is what the American has the credit of seeking in his every 

 enterprise, — the conditions of its welfare must be assiduously cared for. Poul- 

 try management is with some a success, with others a failure. This difference, 

 other things being equal, must be owing entirely to care and skilled attention, 

 or the neglect of it in their management. A '^ liberally educated" gentleman 

 once said to me, '"'I can't understand why we have no eggs ; Ave have hens and 

 they have nothing to do but to give us eggs." He had yet to learn that they 

 could return only an equivalent for what they received. Egg-making is no easy 

 work, and hens will not do much of it without high feed. That fowls cannot 

 be remunerative if half fed is obvious. "Ex niliilo nihil fit,' ^ — from nothing 

 nothing is made. An almost daily production of an article so rich in nitrogen 

 as an egg, — the very essence of animal nourishment, — must demand an ample 

 supply of adequate food regularly given. And yet some varieties of fowls may 

 be over-fed, rendering them lazy and non-layers. To work well they should be 

 neither lean nor fat. Every observer must have noticed a marked difference in 

 the color, flavor and richness of eggs. May not this be attributable to the feed 

 as much as to their breed? Their style of living shows itself in all their pro- 

 ductions, — eggs, flesh, and feathers as well. When a fowl is in a good condi- 

 tion, its downy, goosR like feathers indicate this to the observer. Fowls fed on 

 onions, decayed vegetables and barnyard pickings will doubtless reproduce such 

 flavors ; while those fed o\\ clean, sound grain and fresh vegetables will have 

 the better flavors. Poultry, like all animals, have organs, — digestive, respira- 



39 



