238 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



As layers and for the table, game-fowl have hardly 

 an equal. Their eggs and flesh are both perfect, and 

 for beauty a black-breasted red is quite at the head of 

 the list. But they fight so terribly that nothing else can 

 live near them. The coming fowl is, I think, the Indian 

 game, a bird like an improved Malay. It first turned 

 up in Devonshire, having been brought by ship to the 

 ports of that county. The Indian game, as it is called, 

 is now a fixed type ; they lay the finest egg, and 

 continuously, and the chickens are so hardy as to be 

 unkillable by the ordinary diseases and accidents to 

 which chicks are liable. My brother brought from 

 Madras an Indian game cock and hen from Ootaca- 

 mund. They were blue in colour. We crossed them 

 with our Indian game, and have a stock of very fine 

 birds. I have exported many of these — several cockerels 

 to IMonte Video. Another capital race is the Plymouth 

 Rocks, bred by the Americans from, I think, a cuckoo- 

 coloured fowl and the Cochin. The legs are now clean, 

 clear from feathers, but the head, tail, and roaring crow 

 of the Cochin remain ; they lay brown or buff eggs 

 like the Cochin, but always lighter in colour. These 

 handsome yellow-legged birds are good layers and 

 excellent mothers, and with the Indian game make the 

 hardiest and handiest stock for a farm. The Leghorns, 

 too, are among the best of the varieties recently in- 

 troduced. These are almost everlasting layers, producing 

 eggs throughout the year, and lay very large fine eggs, 

 larger than those of any other sort I know. Hamburghs, 

 also, are good layers, but the Leghorn and Minorca 

 eggs are the heaviest by a good deal, and are driving 



