26 FARMING FOR LADIES. [chap. i. 



the dirt of which cannot be scraped out at 

 the door. 



Cottages may, indeed, he constantly seen 

 surrounded with poultry, though containing 

 neither yard nor outhouse, but lodged inside 

 the cot, without any other outlet than the 

 road, and the author from whom we have 

 quoted mentions one, owned by an old woman, 

 who thus kept a cock and half a dozen hens 

 so safe and warm that she had eggs in the 

 depth of winter. " Having little or no family, 

 she wanted no sleeping-loft in her kitchen, 

 which was as high as the rafters and thatch ; 

 she contrived, therefore, to lay inside from the 

 front to the back wall, at the fire-place, as 

 much flooring as was sufficient for her fowls, 

 which perched upon the couples over head. 

 She had a ladder and a hatchway for going 

 up to clean the boards or take away the eggs 

 from the nests ; and the fowls themselves 

 went up and down from the outside through a 

 small sliding shutter in the gable, on a level 

 with the floor of the loft, by a ladder which 

 was removed at night." 



We allude to this, rather to show what may 

 be done upon a very small and primitive scale, 



