BREEDING FOR POINTS. 131 



fouling the ground. The droppings are dried up and cease 

 to exhale poison ; and that this is far less noxious seems to 

 be proved by the guano islands, which are simply buried in 

 the accumulations of years, but in a desiccated state. In 

 England we have damp excrementitu)us matter, which 

 means diffused sewer gas. These climatic differences have 

 not, we think, received enough consideration. 



Finally, it will have been observed that in all the tested 

 instances cited above, the undertaking was begun in a small 

 way, and the fowls made to "pay as they go" There were 

 no novices " embarking " in it. A few were bred first, and 

 laying was bred up to, and business extended as it paid and 

 opened out. From small, to greater and greater, paying as it 

 went, that has been the method of all the really successful 

 cases from which the above examples are taken. And we 

 are sure that this is the only possible path to successful 

 poultry farming. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



BREEDING FOR POINTS. 



IT is impossible to breed poultry which shall continuously 

 approach even a fair exhibition standard, without under- 

 standing the main principles which underlie such breeding. 

 The produce of "prize" birds at a given show may be worth 

 a great deal, or from this point of view may be worth 

 nothing. Any such difference in value depends, of coarse, 

 upon the fact that the birds in question may be likely to 

 produce the desii *,d class of chickens, or may not. That 

 anyone can understand ; but when we remember that the 

 valuable bird and the worthless bird may look almost exactly 

 alike, we want to understand why this is so. Here, again, 

 everyone understands something about it, for one may be 

 cross-bred and yet look like the pure-bred. We knew a 



