sity to show what a woman can do ! For such 

 women we should go to the rice and cotton 

 fields, if not to the agricultural annals of South 

 Carolina, where many who might be named, 

 have been known, with a fortitude and sagacity 

 almost beyond their sex, to retrieve their dilap- 

 idated estates, and do infinite honor to them- 

 selves. We could name some in Virginia and 

 Maryland ; and if God spares our lives to follow 

 out the design of this work in the spirit it was 

 undertaken, the portrait and memoir of some 

 such shall sooner or later, if to be had, adorn its 

 pages. 



But again, in a feeling of enthusiasm in all 

 that concerns the sex in their highest aims, and 

 claims upon our admiration and respect, yve are 

 wandering from the more homely but essential 

 branches of domestic economy, on which it will 

 be our pleasure to discourse v^'ith them from 

 time to time ; as for instance — on rearing poul- 

 try ; on preserving fruits ; on the management 

 of the kitchen, the dairy, the garden, the grape- 

 ry; the Jiotoer bed ; on knitting, needle-work, 

 &o. &c. 



For the present our remarks and extracts 

 must have reference to the Plate Iff Poultry 

 which ornaments this number. 



The Bolton Greys. — Of this breed Mr. 

 Mowbray, from whose work our plate is taken, 

 says, — " This variety, apparently the crack breed 

 of their vicinity, but entirely unknown in the 

 metropolis, is thus described by Rev. Mr. Ash- 

 worth : — ' small size, short in the leg and 

 plump in the make. The color of the genuine 

 kind, invariably pure ^vhite in the whole lappet 

 of the neck ; the body ^vhite, thickly spotted 

 with bright black bars at the extremity of the 

 tail ; they are chiefly esteemed as verj' constant 

 layers, though their color would mark them for 

 good table fowl.' " From this description it 

 would seem that this breed might be worth im- 

 portation ; but after all, Mowbray's description 

 of poultry-hoiise-feeding, &;c. are too aristocratic, 

 refined, costly and impracticable for common use 

 in this country. Such books are too often written 

 by cocknej- book-makers, some of whom would 

 hardly know a duck from a goose. Mr. Be- 

 raent's book on Poultrj' is a valuable work, but 

 being copj^ righted, we do not take the liberty 

 of extracting freely from it, but shall have re- 

 course to Chambers' noble work, in which there 

 is so little that is not worthy of a place, as enter- 

 taining mutters of natural history, or of practical 

 value, that we give very much at length what is 

 there said, with notes, as they may be deemed 

 to be appropriate and called for. 



But the truth is, that these fancy breeds of 

 pigeons and of poultrj', as yvcM as of domestic 

 animals, do very well to please the eye. and to 



bird fancier, but, for the mo.9t part, it is sufficient, 



f.5C3) 



if not better, to confine oar attention to a few 

 sorts, such as have been tried and proved, but if 

 w^e have leisure and means, it were but a natu- 

 ral and innocent diversion to amuse ourselves 

 with the several varieties in shape and color ; 

 and for ourselves, we would not be long on a 

 farm, before we should hecorae personally ac- 

 quainted and familiar even to a feather, with 

 each individual duck and goose and fowl and 

 pigeon on the place — and that -w-ould be the on- 

 ly objection to the Guinea fowl — their uudis- 

 tinguishable sameness of shape, color, gait, walk, 

 voice, temper, all as neat and uniform as West- 

 Point graduates. By-the-bye, the most remark- 

 able things exhibited at the late Agricultural Fair 

 of the American Institute, were a pair of milk- 

 white Guinea fowls, and a pair of milk-white 

 mules. On inquiry, we had been anticipated in 

 our wish to purchase the fonner, to send them 

 to a friend in Carolina. 



For American housewives there is more use- 

 ful infonnation in the article we shall take fi'om 

 the American Agriculturist, in this or the next 

 number, by Mr. L. F. Allen, than in all Mow- 

 bray's book. 



Speaking of varieties, there is a very large 

 bodied, square-built breed to be found of late 

 years only as far as we know in the neighbor- 

 hood of Philadelphia, which we are under the 

 impression is a different breed from the Bucks 

 County ; more compact and better clothed, and 

 which we have heard called and purchased, un- 

 der the name of the " Ostrich breed." The hens 

 weigh five pounds from the roost when in good 

 order, and the capon is said to weigh ten pounds. 

 We think we have known one that weighed 

 that much, to be sent to our old friend S. E. of 

 Baltimore, who in matters of the table, knows a 

 liawk from a handsaw, and never enjoys the 

 best dish with so good a relish as when a friend 

 partakes it with him. ^Ve purchased a few- 

 weeks since a pair of the.se to go to Carolina, the 

 sire of which was said to have weighed 13 lbs. ,- 

 and with them we sent, in the brig George, a 

 pair of Mala}' s of a rich changeable blue-black 

 color, that promised to be of magnificent size 

 and most splendid plumage. The e^f^ of the 

 Ostrich breed, as we once tested by the scales 

 of the Chesapeake Bank, is exactly double that 

 of an ordinary egg. The young chicken of the 

 Bucks County breed, that we remember when 

 a small chap, was longer on the leg and half 

 naked. 



POULTRY. 



Poultry {from poule, French for hen) is a term 

 applied to different kinds of large birds in a state 

 of domestication, as the chicken or barndoor 

 fowl, turkey, goose, pea-fowl, and guinea-fowl. 

 The most numerous and important in everj' re- 

 , ^, , .. p , ,. , spect are those first mentioned, 



employ tlie speculations of the naturalist _.^4^ ^ CHicKENS.-The chicken is classed by the na- 



turalists in the tribe of the Gallinacece, forming 



