CROPS AND PROFITS 



Varro/ whose taste must have been poor in 

 the matter of poultry, — excellent eating. 



The young Guineas, like the young turkeys, 

 are delicate, however, and suffer from sudden 

 changes of temperature. Give them what 

 care you will, and all the dietetic luxuries of 

 the books, and on some fine morning, you 

 shall find the half of a brood moping and 

 staggering, and drooping out of life. The young 

 turkeys are even more subject to infantile ail- 

 ments, and their invalid caprices outmatch 

 all the nostrums of the doctors. Yet some old 

 spectacled lady in the back country, with noth- 

 ing better than a turned-up barrel in the way 

 of shelter, will by an easy and indescribable 

 'knack' of treatment, rear such broods as can- 

 not be rivalled by any literal execution of the 

 rules of Boswell and Doyle. 



Beyond the age of six weeks, however, 

 danger mostly ceases, and the poults have a 

 good chance — barring the foxes — of coming 

 to the honors of decapitation; and I know few 

 prettier farm sights, than a squadron of pure 

 white turkeys, marching over new mown 

 grass-land, with their skirmishers deployed on 



*Lib. III., De Re Rust. Hae novissimae in triclinium 

 ganearium introierunt e culina propter fastidium hom- 

 inum. Veneunt propter penuriam magno. 



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