GUINEA FOWLS. 377 



till the horn on their head is fairly grown. Oatmeal, (i. e. groats,) 

 is a great treat, cooked potatoes, boiled rice, any thing in short 

 that is eatable, may be thrown down to them. They will pick 

 the bones left after dinner, with great satisfaction, and no doubt 

 benefit to themselves. The tamer they can be made, the less 

 troublesome will those birds be which you retain for stock ; 

 the more kindly they are treated, the more they are petted and 

 pampered, the fatter and better conditioned will those others 

 become which you design for your own table, or as presents 

 to your friends, and the better price will you get if you send 

 them to market. 



Of all known birds, this, perhaps, is the most prolific of 

 Eggs. Week after week, and month after month, sees no, or 

 very rare intermission of the daily deposit. Even the process 

 of moulting is sometimes insufiicient to draw off the nutriment 

 the creature takes to make feathers instead of Eggs, and the 

 poor thing will sometimes go about half-naked in the chilly 

 autumnal months, like a Fowl that had escaped from the cook 

 to avoid a preparation for the spit ; unable to refrain from its 

 diurnal visit to the nest, and consequently unable to furnish 

 itself with a new great coat. As the body of a good cow is a 

 distillery for converting all sorts of herbage into milk, and no- 

 thing else, or as little else as possible, so the body of the Gui- 

 nea Hen is a most admirable machine for producing Eggs 

 out of insects, vegetables, grain, garbage, or whatever an om- 

 nivorous creature can lay hold of. 



From this great aptitude for laying, which is a natural 

 property, and not an artificially encouraged habit, and also 

 from the very little disposition they show to sit, I am inclined 

 to suspect that, in their native country, the dry, burning 

 wastes of Central Africa, they do not sit at all on their Eggs, 

 but leave them to be hatched by the sun, like Ostriches, to 

 which they bear a close affinity. That they do in this country 

 occasionally sit and hatch, is no valid objection to this idea, 



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