110 EGGS! THEIR PRESERVATION 



food will keep a certain quantity of Hens in health, without 

 being sufficient to cause them to lay. Increase the quantity of 

 food, or decrease the number of Hens, and you have a super- 

 abundance, which produces Eggs. But as the rejected scraps 

 of every family, and the refuse odds and ends of every farming 

 premises, are tolerably steady in their amount, taking one 

 month with another, it is better to have a small number of 

 Hens, leaving them to forage from the supply which is con- 

 stantly open to them, than to trust to extra hand-feeding, which 

 may be often neglected or shortened. 



A warm and dry night's lodging is good, but not so confine- 

 ment during the day, even in the best of poultry-houses. The 

 Hens will always keep themselves out of the wet, and no care 

 can compensate for the exercise and variety of food afforded 

 them by a state of liberty. 



There is nothing so instructive as a case, whether in law, 

 physic, or poultry-keeping. During the hard winter of '46-'47, 

 our own Hens not laying, we obtained a plentiful supply fresh 

 laid from a neighbouring farm. The Hens were common dung- 

 hill mongrels, the accommodation for them not so good as our 

 own. But the Eggs were the perquisite of the farmer's wife ; 

 her pin-money by a mutual understanding while the corn 

 went into the pocket of the farmer. The lady consequently 

 permitted her pullets, without the least remonstrance, to make 

 a large hole in a barley-stack, pull out the straws one by one, 

 and, when they had tasted an ear, if they did not approve its 

 flavour, try another. Whether the man grumbled, and the wife 

 pouted and carried her point, is not for us to tell, if we 

 knew. It is certain that the price we were charged for the 

 Eggs did not pay for the damage done by their production. 



A paragraph from the Perth Courier ran the round of the 

 papers, and obtained considerable attention at the time (Dec., 

 1847) from inexperienced poultry-keepers : " Hens will lay 

 Eggs perpetually, if treated in the following manner. Keep 



