532 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch. XLII. 



great part of the winter, at a time when they are of the greatest vaUie, were 

 they kept warm. 



Tl)is attention to warmth is, indeed, so well known in Buckinghamshire 

 and Berkshire, in some parts of which ducklings are fattened in great 

 numbers in the early part of the spring for the London markets, that the 

 chickens are there generally reared by the fire-side. This is mostly done 

 by cottagers, who have broods at dift'erent stages of their growth, and 

 have them sold in the London markets at extravagant prices: one man — 

 a labouring peasant, with only one room to live in — has sent up as many 

 as 400 ducks in the year, the greater part of which were sold, at six weeks' 

 old, for twelve shillings a couple*. Tlie neatness generally prevailing in 

 most of our cottages will not, indeed, allow of the animals being kept 

 withinside the dwelling; but it would be very desirable if the hen-houses 

 belonging to every farm, and indeed to every moderate residence where 

 poultry are reared, were constructed at the back of the kitchen chimney, 

 with a flue communicating through it to impart heat. 



Not only is warmth inefficiently secured, but in most farm-houses there 

 is little other attention paid to the feeding than merely giving them the run 

 of the yard and dung-heap, where they pick up a little scattered corn, and 

 get perhaps a handful or two of grain night and morning. Poulterers, 

 however, act differently; for they not only give a plentiful supply of corn, 

 but ship-biscuit broken and soaked in broth or beer, together with treacle 

 and chojjped mutton-suet, and, by these means, they, when cooped, soon 

 become fat. Turkeijs, indeed, are not unusually crammed; but the trouble 

 will hardlv pay a woman who has any household occupation. 



As to ducks and geese, as the former eat all which they can find in the 

 ponds and ditches, they require little more than their share of the grain 

 commonly thrown to the poultry at nightfall; and as geese graze upon the 

 commons, little more is requisite than something to call them home at 

 night, until they arc put up to be fattened, which is done by confining two 

 or three together, in a dark ])Iace, giving them plenty of water and oats at 

 discretion. In some of the fen countries they are, indeed, kept for the 

 sake of their feathers ; their quills being commonly plucked four, and by 

 some persons five times a year — at Lady-day, Midsummer, Lammas, 

 Michaelmas, and Martinmas t; and when killed, their down is also 

 valuable. Geese are profitable in the neighbourhood of commons, and are 

 also kept by many farmers, under the idea that they preserve the health of 

 the cows in the pastures where they feed J; but they foul and injure a 

 great quantity of grass near their haunts, and should therefore never be 

 allowed upon meadow land. 



UABRITS 



are not only kept in a domestic state for the consumption of the table, but 

 are also largely bred wild as live-stock, chiefly for the value of their fur, in 

 some extensive warrens, which are still maintained in those sandy districts 

 of comparatively worthless land which run through several of our southern 

 and midland counties. At six months old they are fit to propagate ; and 

 are of such a prolific nature that, if well fed, they will breed as many as 

 six or seven times in the year, producing from six to eight or nine young 

 ones at a time. This, however, applies chiefly to the domestic kind, which 

 being kept warm and fed upon corn as well as vegetables, produce oftener 



* Buckini^hamshire Report, p. 331. f Lincolnshire Report, p. 441. 



I Bedfordshire Survey, p. 577, 



