140 Number of Cocks. 



culars respecting the cock, require the more 

 especial attention, since, ac'cording tothe okl 

 poultry books, one cock was deemed suffi- 

 cient for ten or even a dozen hens, where- 

 as in winter time, a cock to every four 

 hens may be necessary. Buffon says, a 

 hen well fed and attended, will produce up- 

 wards of one hundred and fifty eggs in a 

 year, beside two broods of chickens. I 

 have observed, a hen generally cackles 

 three or four days previously to laying. 

 Some half-bred game hens began to lay as 

 soon as their chickens were three v/eeks 

 old ; the consequence of high keep and 

 good attendance of the cocks. 



A correspondent in France (1815) in- . 

 formed me, that my httle book had reached 

 that country, so celebrated for poultry, and 

 that the good housewives of France made 

 themselves very merry with my practice of 

 restricting the cock to so few as half a dozen 

 hens, their allowance being twenty, or even 

 twenty-five. The French Naturalists also, 

 in their new Dictionary, I find, have co- 

 pied and recommended this liberal practice. 

 What difference, in such respect, may sub- 



