No. 2. Age of Poultry. — Portable Soup. — A Modern Farmer. 



47 



at the heel — if boots, then the elastic the 

 same as ladies'. 



If the ankles are weak, a surgeon should 

 be consulted without delay. I have benefit- 

 ted many children by making- an elastic lace 

 boot, which, from the support it affords, com- 

 pressing the muscles of the foot, and by 

 bearing well up by means of a spring under 

 the arch of the foot, has prevented lameness, 

 and restored the feet and ankles to their na- 

 tural form. — Hairs Book of the Feet. 



Age of Poultry. 



Farmers usually sell poultry alive, ex- 

 cepting in some parts of the' country, such 

 as the Borders, where geese are killed and 

 plucked for the sake of their feathers before 

 being sent to markel. Poulterers in towns, 

 on the other hand, kill and pluck every sort 

 of fowl for sale, so that the purchaser has it 

 in his power to judge of the carcass; and if 

 he buys an inferior article at a high price, it 

 must be his own fault. It is easy to judge 

 of a plucked fowl, whether old or young, by 

 the state of the legs. If a hen's spur is 

 hard, and the scales on the legs rough, she 

 is old, whether you see her head or no; but 

 the head will corroborate your observation, 

 if the under bill is so stiff that you cannot 

 bend it down, and the comb thick and rough. 

 A young hen has only the rudiments of spurs, 

 the scales on the legs smooth, glossy and 

 fresh coloured, whatever the colour may be, 

 the claws tender and short, the under bill 

 soft, and the comb thin and smooth. An old 

 hen-turkey has rough scales on the legs, cal- 

 losities on the soles of the feet, and long, 

 strong claws ; a young one the reverse of 

 all these marks. When the feathers are on, 

 an old turkey-cock has a long beard, a young 

 one but a sprouting one; and when they are 

 off the smooth scales on the legs decide the 

 point, beside difrerence of size in the wattles 

 of the neck, and in the elastic snot upon the 

 nose. An old goose, when alive, is known 

 by the roughness of the legs, the strength 

 of the wings, particularly at the pinions, the 

 thickness and strength of the bill, and the 

 firmness and thickness of the feathers; and 

 when plucked, by the legs, pinions and bill, 

 and the coarseness of the skin. Ducks are 

 distinguished by the same means, but there 

 is this difference, that a duckling's bill is 

 much longer in proportion to the breadth of 

 its head than that of an old duck. A young 

 pigeon is easily discovered by its pale co- 

 loured, smooth scaled, tender, collapsed feet, 

 and the yellow, long down interspersed 

 among the feathers. A pigeon that can fly 

 has always red coloured legs and no down. 



and is then too old for use. — Stephens'' Book 

 of the Farm. 



Portable Soup. 



When one pound of lean beef, free from 

 fat and separated from tiie bones, in the fine- 

 ly chopped state in which it is used for beef 

 sausages or mince-meat, is uniformly mixed 

 with its own weight of cold water, slowly 

 heated to boiling, and the liquid, af^ter boil- 

 ing briskly for a minute or two, is strained 

 through a towel from the coagulated albu- 

 men and the fibrine, now become hard and 

 horny, we obtain an equal weight of the 

 most aromatic soup, of such strength as can- 

 not be obtained, even by boiling for hours, 

 from a piece of flesh. When mixed with 

 salt and the other usual additions, by which 

 soup is usually seasoned, and tinged some- 

 what darker by means of roasted onions or 

 burnt sugar, it forms the very best soup 

 which can in any way be prepared from one 

 pound of flesh. The influence which the 

 brown colour of this soup, or colour in gene- 

 ral, exercises on the taste, in consequence 

 of the ideas associated with colour in the 

 mind, — ideas of strength, concentration, &c., 

 — may be rendered quite evident by the fol- 

 lowing experiment. The soup, coloured 

 brown by means of caramel, is declared by 

 all persons to have a much stronger taste 

 than the same soup when not coloured, and 

 yet the caramel, in point of fact, does not in 

 any way actually heighten the taste. If we 

 allow the flesh to boil for a long time with 

 the water, or if we boil down the soup, it 

 acquires spontaneously, when concentrated 

 to a certain point, a brownish colour, and a 

 delicate flavor of roast meat. If we evapo- 

 rate it to dryness in the water-bath, or if 

 possible at a still lower temperature, we can 

 obtain a dark brown, soft mass, of which 

 half an ounce suffices to convert one pound 

 of water, with the addition of a little salt, 

 into a strong, well-flavored soup. The ta- 

 blets of so called portable soup prepared in 

 England and France are not to be compared 

 with the extract of flesh just mentioned ; 

 for these are not made from flesh, but con- 

 sist of gelatine, more or less pure, only dis- 

 tinguished from bone gelatine by its higher 

 price. — Liehig^s Researches on the Chemis- 

 try of Food. 



A Modern Farmer. 



Ten years ago it was a goodly thing to 

 visit the Philadelphia market, and see the 

 excellent provision which the honest hus- 

 bandman set forth to gratify the palates and 

 increase the flesh of our citizens. Each 



