TABLE POULTRY. 87 



trade ; and it is the best trade which pays. To obtain this 

 there must be high feeding from the very shell. This high, 

 and what may be called even feeding, from the shell, is of 

 the greatest importance, as the want of it is the cause of a 

 most common defect. If an ordinary English fowl, badly 

 fed, is examined, there will be found to be hardly any meat 

 on the back; indeed, many people have an idea there never 

 is any meat there ! Now the effect of even several weeks 

 good feeding upon a thin chicken is to deposit either flesh 

 or fat in places, but not to produce that even clothing with 

 meat all over, which is the perfection of chicken-rearing. 

 Moreover, fat so deposited is gross and disagreeable, whereas, 

 even feeding rather deposits it infiltrated amongst the 

 muscle, giving tenderness and juiciness to the whole, as 

 is seen on a larger scale in well-marbled beef. So well 

 understood is this in France, that it is usual, as Mr. T 

 Christy has again and again pointed out, to expose the 

 poultry there with the backs uppermost, the exact contrary 

 of English practice, though there has lately been some 

 imitation of French practice in a few of the better West- 

 End shops. If the back is well and evenly covered with 

 flesh, the breast must carry as much meat as the build of 

 the fowl admits of; but the converse is by no means the 

 case. Whether or not better knowledge may lead to such 

 a general reform in the matter of shop display, this method 

 of judging cannot be too widely known by purchasers ; and 

 the raiser should never be satisfied till he can produce 

 chickens with the back nicely covered to a smooth surface, 

 which can only be secured when the early rearing has been 

 attended to. Concerning this nothing need be added to the 

 previous chapters. 



A large number of the fowls fattened even in Surrey and 

 Sussex never reach this standard, for the simple reason that 

 the fatters depend upon supplies collected by higglers from 



