Home Production of Poultry. 341 



form at almost every meal ; it is not every British family that 

 dines three days a week off " the inevitable poule" stewed into 

 delicious tenderness in the ever-simmering- pot-a-feu, or surely 

 the industry of our wives and daughters would never have stood 

 disparaged in a comparison like this. 



In the wealthiest kingdom of the world, having innumerable 

 great cities besides the metropolis, in which a luxurious popu-r 

 lation abounds, and with a vast importation staring us in the 

 face, we cannot say that a want of good markets forbids our 

 feathered stock becoming a greater source of meat-supply. No 

 valid reason has ever been assigned why Surrey and Sussex 

 should enjoy almost a monopoly of London high prices for early 

 chickens, why Buckinghamshire should be the chief hotbed of 

 precocious ducklings, why geese and Christmas turkeys should 

 flock mainly from the eastern counties, why Cork and Water- 

 ford should export more poultry than other counties of Ireland. 

 The town and neighbourhood of Aylesbury receive more than 

 20,0(30/. per annum for their milk-white ducks ; and a railway 

 witness has stated that the enormous number of 800,000 are 

 annually reared in Buckinghamshire, though Mr. Clare Sewell 

 Read, M.P. (in vol. xvi. of this Journal) supposes half the 

 quantity to be nearer the truth. But these fat birds are no 

 more indigenous or acclimatised to that locality than edge-tools 

 are to Sheffield or gun-barrels to Birmingham ; they would bring 

 equal profit to many other districts if it only became the fashion 

 there to breed them. There is nothing peculiar, again, in the 

 cross-bred chickens which come from certain counties earlier, 

 bigger, fatter, and whiter than from elsewhere ; and, more- 

 over, our fanciers have provided us with breeds adapted to all 

 differences of soil, climate, and situation. We believe that, 

 what with improved native and imported varieties, we possess 

 the best stock of egg-layers, hatchers, and table-fowls in the 

 world. In no country is the management of our best poultry- 

 yards excelled ; and, to bring up the wholesale results to their 

 true national importance, all we require is an extension of the 

 taste for bird-farming throughout the class which earns its living 

 on the land. 



For what exclusive advantages, what speciality in system, or 

 peculiar expertness in art, distinguish the great poultry regions 

 of the Continent ? The answer is to be found in a Report of 

 Mr. Geyelin, C.E., the projector of the National Poultry Com- 

 pany (Limited), and the designer of the Poultry Home at Bromley. 

 Last year this gentleman made a tour of inspection in France, 

 and an instructive lesson for the readers of this Journal will 

 be a brief epitome of his Report. 



In the first place, Mr. Geyelin discovered no monster " galli- 



