203 



THE TAMK DFCK. 



For the first month, the confinement of their mother, 

 under a coop is better than too much liberty. All 

 kinds of sopped food, buckwheat flour, Indian or 

 barley meal and water mixed thin, worms, &c., suit 

 them. No people are more successful than cottagers, 

 who keep them for the first period of their existence 

 in pens two or three yards square, cramming them 

 night and morning with dried pellets of flour and 

 water, or egg and flour, till they are judged old enough 

 to be turned out with their mother to forage on the 

 common or the village pond. 



"When ducklings have been hatched under a com- 

 mon hen, or a turkey hen, they are not generally 

 allowed to go to the water till they become a little 

 hardy, by remaining on land ; but the moment they 

 see water, they naturally plunge into it, to the great 

 alarm of their foster mother, which cannot follow them ; 

 a circumstance which has been remarked by the earli- 

 est writers, and is finely depicted by M. Rosset in his 

 " Poeme de 1' Agriculture." 



It is necessary, to prevent accidents, to take care 

 that such ducklings come regularly home every eve- 

 ning ; but precautions must be taken before they are 

 permitted to mingle with the old ducks, lest the latter 

 ill-treat and kill them, though ducks are by no means 

 so pugnacious and jealous of new-comers as common 

 fowls uniformly are. 



FATTENING. 



ACCORDING to Grervase Markham, pulse, or any kind 

 of grain, will fatten ducks or ducklings in a fortnight ; 

 but if he had tried this, he would have found that his 

 receipt was not always successful. 



Lawrence says that butchers' offal is excellent for 

 fattening ducks, as it does not give the flesh the rank, 

 disagreeable flavor which it always imparts to pork. 

 Acorns, on the contrary, while they are good for fat- 

 tening, injure the flavor of the flesh, and barley in 



