OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 183 



a homemade wooden crank, it may be fastened directly 

 to your homemade wooden spool, Fig. 62. The nearby 

 axle, 16, in Fig. 82, must be provided with a crank, 

 which you can have made of pipe, the same as for the 

 fence ratchet in Fig. 120, only you omit to split the 

 elbow. Keep it intact, and it will just screw onto your 

 axle of half-inch pipe. 



The partitions of the nearby pens and also of the dis- 

 tant pens must be carried up nine inches higher than 

 the tops of the pens, so as to serve as supports of the 

 cylinder axles, and give the cylinders with their tin 

 flanges room to turn. See Fig. 65. 



The modus operandi can be easily discovered from the 

 above description. The birds race like Jehu through 

 the runway, whenever the bell is rung and grain dropped 

 from the cylinder at either end. Moreover, when the 

 keeper is not at hand and the cylinders have not been 

 moved for some time, they make numerous trips back 

 and forth on their own hook, because they have only one 

 idea in their heads, which may be expressed thus : 

 " Let's run and see what there is good at the other end." 

 It will be found that it is very easy to teach fowls, old 

 or young and of various species, to run at the sound of 

 the bell. They are naturally great listeners and give 

 close attention to every sort of sound within their hear- 

 ing, which is very acute. A cock will respond to a 

 crowing that is a mile or more away, if the wind is not 

 unfavorable. Their own language they understand with- 

 out learning. But they have an aptitude for learning 

 aural signals other than the natural language of their 

 species. 



Witness the common hen with a brood of turkey 

 chicks, peafowl chicks or ducklings. At first, her 

 younglings do not know what she means when she calls 

 them to partake of a choice morsel. It is not their 

 mother tongue. But in a few days they learn its mean- 



