\ 



MENTAL TRAITS IN THE POULTRY-YARD. 625 

 MENTAL TRAITS IN THE POULTRY-YARD. 



By benjamin KAER. 



THE instincts and ordinary habits of the common barn-yard 

 fowl have been closely studied and exhaustively discussed, 

 but it is otherwise with the almost human emotions and mental 

 processes which are sometimes to be observed in the poultry-yard. 

 The mere searcher for knowledge will discover them with diffi- 

 culty, but they are easily found by an eye which sees with the 

 long familiarity of companionship. Many summers of fond inti- 

 macy with the poultry of a western New York farm long ago 

 convinced at least two boys of this fact. Living in Buffalo, the 

 writer and a brother, who was an inseparable companion, boarded 

 through the whole or a part of several seasons, sometimes six 

 months together, on a farm in Orleans County. Our time was 

 entirely our own, and, as we found little companionship among 

 the busy country lads, many days might have hung heavily on 

 our hands had we not been wholly content to spend the greater 

 part of them among the chickens and the turkeys ; only one sea- 

 son, we added ducks. Our parents had taught us to love and 

 observe Nature, and we were well read for our years in natural 

 history. What was of more importance, we had been led from 

 early childhood to be exact and painstaking in all things. Our 

 play with toys was tiresome to most boys by reason of its careful- 

 ness. Under such circumstances it will not, perhaps, be thought 

 strange that either of us could tell every fowl, young or old, 

 toward the end of each summer, by its name and nearly all of them 

 by their cackling. Usually there were about one hundred on the 

 premises. We not only knew their general appearance as we 

 would familiar faces, but I think there is no doubt that a glimpse 

 of even the half of any head in the barn-yard would have been 

 enough for instant recognition. We knew every hen's nest, 

 when the egg-yield was two dozen a day, and my brother could 

 promptly and with certainty sort out ten dozen eggs and tell 

 which hen laid every one. When there were twenty half -grown 

 cockerels on the farm we could readily name any one which 

 crowed out of sight. Poultry, hens as well as their more pugna- 

 cious lords, always keep a well-defined scale of authority in force. 

 Not one out of fifty is ignorant of its superiors and inferiors. A 

 brood of young chickens will often settle all this business, while 

 yet little more than fuzzy balls, by a series of really cruel fights. 

 We never missed these exhibitions of infantile ferocity if we could 

 help it, and a particularly savage young fighter was immediately 

 a marked object of our admiring interest. He was usually given 



VOL. XXXIII. — 40 



