102 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



set them is February, though any month between 

 that and Michaelmas is good. A hen sits twenty 

 days, whereas geese, ducks, and turkeys sit thirty. 

 Observe to let them have constantly meat and drink 

 near them while they sit, that they may not straggle 

 from their eggs and chill them. One cock will serve 

 ten hens. If fowls are fed with buck or French 

 wheat, or with hempseed, they say they will lay 

 more eggs than ordinary ; and buckwheat, either 

 whole or ground, and made into paste, is a grain 

 that will fatten fowls or hogs very speedily, but the 

 common food to fatten them with is barley-meal wet 

 with milk or water ; but wheat-flour is better." So 

 amusingly and shrewdly wrote one a hundred and 

 fifty years ago, who would be eminent now-a-days as 

 an agriculturist were he alive. Still information so 

 indefinite will hardly suit the modern amateur. 

 Then must our " 'prentice hand " essay the subject. 



For myself, I have a partiality for the elegant 

 game fowl, which, moreover, have the recommenda- 

 tion that they feed a good deal on grass-seeds ; lead- 

 ing a gipsy life more than any other kind ; encamping 

 in the open ; concealing their nests, as the landrail, 

 &c. The black Spanish have a charm with many, 

 and certainly they deserve credit, if for nothing else, 

 for the extraordinary whiteness of their immense 

 eggs, being in wonderful contrast, whether intended 

 or not, to the glossy black of their plumage. To the 

 Dorking and the Cochin-China I have the same 

 objection that I have to a musty gossip. They may 

 be a very good sort of animal — profoundly maternal 

 — a useful, hospitable, routine running class — but, 



