THE MODERN HEN 271 



more he elaborated its " points," the more, in every 

 probability, he would spoil the fowl for all the 

 purposes that has made it valuable to the farmer. 

 Again, the farmyard can take the most monstrous of 

 fanciers' productions, such as the maypole-like Lang- 

 shan, or even the Japanese fowl, with sickle-feathers 

 nine feet long, and can make something of it, as the 

 public school makes something of the boy who has 

 been ever so quaintly brought up. Even the de- 

 generate, from the utility point of view, may give 

 fresh vitality to the farm-house breed. The fanciers 

 have strained off into separate phials the various 

 elements of fowldom. Each essence becomes by 

 isolation so attenuated as almost to lose the power 

 of reproduction, yet so precious in the eyes of the 

 fancier that he will not give it the stimulus of new 

 blood that it needs. Then that vandal, the utility 

 man, takes two of these valueless treasures, and, 

 mingling them, produces, perhaps, a fowl worth 

 having. 



It is to the Utility Poultry Club that the chief 

 credit is given of having rescued the fowl from a false 

 specialisation at the hands of the breeders. It is the 

 first not very articulate voice of the farm-house pro- 

 testing against a fancy that had ignored the table for 

 the show-bench. The Orpington and the Wyandotte 

 must now maintain supremacy, not by means of an 

 ever-widening differentiation of shape or feather, but 

 by increased egg-production, precocity of growth, or 

 capacity for fattening and bearing flesh. Even now, 

 however, the farmer is not certain to get what he 

 wants. There is a danger that the new crack layers 

 may be over-elaborated for the one contest under 



