472 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ Jane 21, 1877. 



packefl. If shabbily make note of it, also of your donbts of their 

 hatching, if you have any. Write also at once the complaint you 

 have to make to the sender. Do not accept, then complain after- 

 wards. If packed as well or even a little better than you would 

 have done them yourself, and you have confidence in the man 

 you purchased ther" from, make up your mind that he has done 

 his best, and the- cause for failure, if you need to find one, may 

 lie in your hanJling or in the hen's mismanagement. Think cf 

 It ! You are going to trust these most delicate of fabrications for 

 twenty-one days to a senseless hen that has nothing but a httle 

 instinct to guide her. Is it not wonderful that so many chicks 

 are hatched ? Is it not unpardonable audacity that demands or 

 even expects the sitting to be duplicated ? Let the seller duph- 

 cate the order if he wants to, but do not expect to have two or 

 three sittings for the price of one. Look out for rats ! Cats or 

 dogs cau be trained to guard young chickens not only against 

 rats, but against stranger dogs and cats. 



Feed yonng chicks often, either with broken grain or with 

 meal scalded. Do not give them meal of any kind wet with cold 

 milk or water. If yon buy corn meal for family use sift it, even 

 If it IS of best quahty, giving the coarser grains left in the sieve 

 to the chickens. Do not allow the bones from the table to be 

 thrown into the dust-bin or to uselessly adorn your door yard. 

 When the time comes to throw them away throw them on the 

 ■t' S'^ j"^ "^® animal charcoal to your chickens. If anything 

 IS burned in the cooking do not fret about it ; it is only making 

 the charcoal your poultry are in need of, especially if they have 

 had the range of orchard and meadow, and have been obliged 

 after a fashion to pick up their living where they can and of what 

 they can find. Their eggs and flesh are apt to taste. Charcoal 

 in any form will remedy this evil. 



At this season while eggs are plentiful and cheap do not trade 

 them off for groceries or use them extravagantly ; lay aside a 

 store for the days of famine. Eggs will not keep if the pores of 

 the shell remain open. If the egg contains the germ of life it will 

 die after a time and the air will act upon it, causing putrefaction. 

 If the egs 18 simply clear the air will absorb the moisture, and 

 time will had it a hardened mass. The secret of preserving eggs 

 IS m excluding the air, sealing the pores of the shell. This may 

 be done by dipping the eggs in melted tallow and afterwards 

 packing them m bran, layer upon layer, covering the uppermost 

 well with bran, or salt may be used instead of brau, or water 

 saturated with lime and salt is also good. An English lady, an 

 experienced poultry breeder, has preserved eggs in this solution, 

 ieeping them for several years without a single failure 



If you have a garden spot plant sunflower seeds ; Mammoth 

 Jrtussian is best— the seed will prove most excellent food for your 

 poultry next autumn. The leaves will do well if saved next 

 aiituuin when dried for the chickens to scratch among during 

 the winter; while the stalks will, when dried, make the best of 

 light material for starting a fire. If your poultry yard lacks 

 shade a grove " of these Mammoths will afford it ; but protect 

 the young plants from the poultry by covering with brush or 

 protecting racks. 



Do not exercise cruelty in trying to keep a hen from sitting 

 when eggs rather than chicks are in request. Better let her 

 take the nest for a few days, she will lay just as soon again. An 

 excellent plan is to tie a rope to one of her legs, fastening the 

 other end of it to a post or stake out of doors in the shade. She 

 will attempt once or twice to return t, her sitting, but will soon 

 give it up and busy herself pecking at the rope. At night, after 

 d^rk place her upon the roost if it is not convenient to leave her. 

 With us three days at the most has been the limit of such treat- 

 ment to effect a cure. Give a good supply of food and water. 



Let us suppose that each day you extract a drop of blood from 

 each chick, and, say, about two from each adult bird, how much 

 laying or featheriug-out, or growing would you expect them to 

 do / Let us suppose that it was done by a thousand, yes, ten 

 thousand little suckers, one at each point of the skin. How 

 quietly would you expect a sitting hen uoder such treatment to 

 remain upon her nest ? You " would not expect it, would not 

 even think of such a thing ; " but you do if you harbour lice upon 

 your premises. Do not compromise matters. Do not permit 

 even one. Do not be tempted into receiving as a gift the best 

 bird that was ever hatched if with it you must accept vermin 

 and you do not know how to get rid of them. Cue day's work 

 a-mnnth w;ill not do. Keep a guard continually; use kerosene, 

 smoke, whitewash,fumigate, put tansy, ortobacco, or pennyroyal 

 in the nest boxes, sprinkle carboUc powder, chloride of lime, 

 lime or ashes freely. When you have gone through the role 



suV°ct °™' **^*'°' ™°°^ ''^'"^°*' ^^ ^"''^ "'■ ^°^^ "P°° ''^'^ 



-^if?!,'"'''*®-?,''! ^,^^'"' '"''™ *^® <=^'^''s II™ four or five months 

 ?v, V • ^iT^ do better apart. Do not feed too much bone meal- 

 inat IS, the raw bone pulverised, or meat to young birds, unless 

 yon wish to hasten maturity at the expense of size. Give green 

 feed regularly If your birds are cooped from it; if you hive a 

 garden, remembering that your birds will need their salad next 

 winter, prepare for a pnpply. A little patch of onions, a few 

 cabbages, turnips, and beets will save you mauy a dollar when 



the snow is on the ground, and will cost yon but little of either 

 time or labour. 



Do not force your hens to " lay themselves out " by givine too 

 much stimulating egg-producing food, especially if your birds 

 are worth anything. If kept for the eggs for sitting it would be 

 very nice, with orders coming in for eggs at three or five dollars 

 per dozen, to get all that could be had, but what sort of stock 

 can be raised from such forced producing? Would it not be 

 better if it were of less and of natural growth ? Feed according 

 to what you want. Corn will not produce eggs, but heat and 

 flesh instead while wheat contains the albumen which enters 

 Jm^]Sn composition of the egg.— [American Fanciers' 



THE DUTCH BABBIT, 



It is now our purpose to describe the smallest variety— the 

 Lnghsh Dutch and the French Nicard. This variety is pretty 

 but It IS absolutely useless except for nursing, so far as utility is 

 concerned, it being so small, sometimes no bigger than a good- 

 sized guinea pig. The body is well-shaped but small-boned, the 

 legs short and thin, the neck a trifle long, and the head, gene- 

 rally speaking, small with a broadish face ; the ears are short 

 aod erect, but not so strong in the muscles as those of Hima- 

 layan or Silver-Grey, still they should on no account lop, but 

 they should stand erect or fall slightly forward. 



In this country but few really perfect specimens are found, 

 although the cultivation of the breed is rapidly increasing and 

 every encouragement is given to their exhibition. In France 

 and the Netherlands, however, the breed is cultivated to an 

 enormous extent, and the number that are annually sent to the 

 London market is exceedingly large. Of course these are not bo 

 small as the orthodox show specimen should be, but they gene- 

 rally run from 4 to 6 lbs. iu weight. They are reared in large 

 numbers, generally in houses with the temperature slightly 

 heated, and the breeding is said to be exceedingly profitable. 

 One article of food that is much used, and which is believed to 

 be very flesh-growing, is a ball of meal and potatoes dried in the 

 oven and given hard. Sometimes this sort is sent over alive 

 and if a fancier will frequent the markets early iu the morning 

 he can often pick up a couple of well-marked specimens at pot 

 prices. A larger majority are, however, skinned, and sent over 

 in quantities and sold as Ostend Babbits. 



The groundwork of the Dutch Rabbit may be of any colour 

 black aod blue being perhaps the two best, as the most calcu- 

 lated to show oft the marking ; but grey, fawn, and lemon are 

 also common, and in some cases very handsome, although, ex- 

 cept in rare instances, the contrast between the two colours is 

 not so striking. Tortoiseshell is much admired by the fancy, 

 not so much because of its beauty as of its rarity, for it is not 

 nearly so much admired as the Black, which is, to our thinking, 

 the colour best calculated to show off the markings to advantage. 

 The modern or "new" style of marking is as follows :— The 

 body and rump of some self colour or tortoiseshell ; round the 

 neck a white ring varies in width, but tapers gradually as it goes 

 upwards ; from the summit of this collar a white streak travels 

 between the ears and down the face, increasing in width as it 

 descends ; the under portion of the chin is generally white ; the 

 toe of each foot is tipped with white. The tipping should not 

 exceed an inch in length, nor extend above the first joint. It is 

 not absolutely necessary that the tippiugs of the fore and hind 

 feet should be of exactly similar lengths, the front feet being 

 often considerably the longer; but it is necessary that the 

 tipping of each of the pair should be uniform, and we think that 

 most judges would be inclined to lean towards absolute uni- 

 formity m the four. This is what is styled the new style of 

 marking, and it is certainly by far the prettier. When a little 

 Black specimen is seen marked to perfection in this style the 

 totil turn-out is exceedingly good. 



The " old " style of marking, though resembling the new in 

 some respects, is still essentially different. The groundwork is 

 of the whole colour, as in the new style ; the collar also is white, 

 but much wider than would be allowed in a specimen of iho 

 modern type— so wide is it that it includes the shoulders and 

 the whole of the front legs in its circle. In both styles the oars 

 should be of the darker colour, and no white hairs visible. It 

 should be distinctly borne in mind that any white hairs in the 

 body of the dark colour, if not an absolute disqualification, are 

 a great deterioration from value ; in fact, no Rabbit with such a 

 blemish could hope to win in any moderate class. The uncalled- 

 for tuft will, however, make itself apparent occasionally, and un- 

 scrupulous fanciers will not hesitate tj pluck it out. This prac- 

 tice constitutes the offence of " trimming," one of the most 

 demoralising of the fancy. It is occasionally done in other 

 varieties, especially the Lop, but more often in the breed now 

 under especial notice. The objectionable tuft is seized by the 

 thumb and finger and dragged out with a jerk, thereby causing 

 considerable pain to the little animal which is thus operated 

 upon. A good judge will at once distinguish a trimmed exhibit 

 in spite of all efforts to have it concealed, and if he be worthy 

 of his office will at once disqualify it ; so that if an exhibitor has 



