No. 4.] FARM POULTRY. 397 



fully aud wonderfull}^ mixed. The poultry stocks of the 

 country, considered as a whole, continue so. There are 

 here and there farming localities where nearly all farmers 

 keep the same kind of fowls, and in some sections flocks of 

 certain breeds are much more numerous than elsewhere ; 

 but there is not anywhere such greater uniformity and bet- 

 ter general excellence as might reasonably be expected after 

 two-thirds of a century of improvement. 



That this last statement is not in accordance with general 

 ideas I am well aware. Any one who will consider the 

 lack of uniformity in the poultry found in the ordinary farm 

 flock, as well as in the ordinary town flock, and who will 

 observe the small proportion of only fair-sized fowls, must 

 admit that there are grounds for it. We need not, how- 

 ever, depend merely on observation. Here is an illustra- 

 tion. A few years ago I had a lot of Light Brahma hens I 

 wanted to sell in a bunch, and at once, in order to get them 

 out of the way. I could not sell them to any of the local 

 buyers, because they were too large for their trade ; so I 

 asked a buyer in a section the other side of Boston, where 

 Brahmas were bred more than any other fowl, if he could use 

 them. He agreed to take them, and turned the deal over to 

 a Somerville buyer, who sometimes made trips to ni}^ town. 



The lot of hens sold weighed at this time only a little over 

 seven pounds apiece, average live weight. They had been 

 laying heavily for between six and seven months, and were 

 not in good condition. Four months before they were sold 

 the}' would have averaged better than nine pounds, many of 

 the hens weiohino; when in good condition ten to ten and a 

 half pounds. When the man who came for them was weigh- 

 ing them, he remarked that they were the heaviest and larg- 

 est hens he had had for a couple of years. 



Talking about weights of poultry, one thing led to 

 another, until Anally he asked : " What do you suppose is 

 the average weight of the fowls we hny ? " T guessed, 

 "About five pounds." " AVell," said he, " the most of the 

 hens we get weigh three to three and a half pounds. liens 

 that weigh four to five jjounds we call large hens, and we 

 get very few lots that will average four pounds." 



