PKOFITABLE AND OENAMENTAL 

 POULTRY. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



UNTIL of late years the breeding of poultry has been 

 almost generally neglected in Great Britain. Any kind of 

 mongrel fowl would do for a farmer's stock, although he 

 fully appreciated the importance of breeding in respect of his 

 cattle and pigs, and the value of improved seeds. Had he 

 thought at all upon the subject, it must have occurred to 

 him that poultry might be improved by breeding from 

 select specimens as much as any other kind of live stock. 

 The French produce a very much greater number of fowls 

 and far finer ones for market than we do. In France, 

 Bonington Mowbray observes, " poultry forms an im- 

 portant part of the live stock of the farmer, and the poultry- 

 yards supply more animal food to the great mass of the 

 community than the butchers' shops " ; while in Egypt, and 

 some other countries of the East, from time immemorial, 

 vast numbers of chickens have been hatched in ovens by 

 artificial heat to supply the demand for poultry ; but in 

 Great Britain poultry-keeping has been generally neglected, 

 eggs are dear, and all kinds of poultry so great a luxury 

 that the lower classes and a large number of the middle 

 seldom, if ever, taste it, except perhaps once a year in the 

 form of a Christmas goose, while hundreds of thou- 

 sands cannot afford even this. It is computed that a 

 million of eggs are eaten daily in London and its suburbs 



B 



