Cochin- Chinas. 95 



except shares, after being over-praised and then abused, 

 they have remained favourites with a large portion of the 

 public, sell at a remunerating price, and form one of the 

 largest classes at all the great exhibitions." This has 

 proved to be a perfectly correct view, and the breed is now 

 firmly established in public estimation, and unusually fine 

 birds will still sell for from five to twenty pounds each. The 

 mania did great service to the breeding and improvement 

 of poultry by awakening an interest in the subject 

 throughout the kingdom which has lasted. 



They are the best of all fowls for a limited space, and 

 not inclined to wander even when they have an extensive 

 run. They cannot fly, and a fence three feet high will 

 keep them in. But if kept in a confined space they must 

 have an unlimited supply of green food. They give us 

 eggs when they are most expensive, and indeed, with regard 

 to new-laid eggs, when they are almost impossible to be 

 had at any price. They begin to lay soon after they are 

 five months old, regardless of the season or weather, and 

 lay throughout the year, except when requiring to sit, 

 which they do twice or thrice a year, and some oftener. 

 Pullets will sometimes lay at fourteen weeks, and want to 

 sit before they are six months old. Cochins have been 

 known to lay twice in a day, but not again on the folio wing- 

 day, and the instances are exceptional. Their eggs are of 

 a pale chocolate colour, of excellent flavour, and usually 

 weigh 2J ounces each. They are excellent sitters and 

 mothers. Pullets will frequently hatch, lay again, and sit 

 with the chickens of the first brood around them. Cochins 

 are most valuable as sitters early in the year, being broody 

 when other fowls are beginning to lay ; but unless cooped 

 they are apt to leave their chickens too soon, especially for 

 early broods, and lay again. They are very hardy, and 

 their chickens easy to rear, doing well even in bleak places 

 without any unusual care. But they are backward in 

 fledging, chickens bred from immature fowls being the 

 most backward. Those which are cockerels show their 

 flight feathers earliest. They are very early matured. 



A writer in the Poultry Chronicle well says : " These 



