LARGE AND SMALL FARMS. 295 



of indefinite extension, with fair returns, than Fowl- 

 breeding on a moderate scale. Eggs and Chickens 

 are in universal demand. They are luxuries appre- 

 ciated alike by rich and poor; and they might be 

 doubled in quantity without materially depressing 

 the market. Our thronged and fashionable watering- 

 places are never adequately supplied with them ; our 

 cities habitually take all they can get and look around 

 for more. I believe that twice the largest number 

 of Chickens ever yet produced in one year might be 

 reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if 

 others should fail, the home market found in each 

 family would prove signally elastic. 



This industry should especially commend itself to 

 poor widows, struggling to retain and rear their 

 children in frugal independence. A widow who, in 

 the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing vil- 

 lage, can rent a cottage with half an acre of south- 

 ward-sloping, sunny land, which she may fence so 

 tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever their 

 roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, 

 and who can incur the expense of constructing there- 

 on a warm, commodious Hen-house, may almost cer- 

 tainly make the production of Eggs and. Fowls a 

 source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheap- 

 ly the refuse of a slaughter-house for feed, giving with 

 it meal or grain in moderate quantities, and accord- 

 ing that constant, personal, intelligent supervision, 

 without which Fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she 

 may reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her 



