THE MODERN HEN 273 



eat seem to be those that come from the drowsy, 

 happy farmyard, where a hen seems to be regarded 

 as " a hen for a' that." 



We do not kill the goose that lays golden eggs. 

 If we did we must not expect it to furnish a dish as 

 superior to common goose as its eggs were to com- 

 mon eggs. There are egg-laying hens and table-hens, 

 and the tendency is to make the one more and more 

 useless for the other purpose. We are not at all sure, 

 however, that the veriest egg-slave may not be as 

 good to eat as the specialised, crammed Sussex fowl 

 that Londoners have to eat. The fowl has a re- 

 markable faculty for converting barley-meal into 

 flesh of sorts, as the goose has the faculty under 

 highly artificial conditions of providing five times 

 the ordinary amount of liver. It is a crucible, not 

 a chicken, that is pumped up with food because 

 London is in a hurry for roast or boiled. The stuff 

 is only half converted, and is almost as much like 

 the raw meal as like finished flesh. But even in the 

 fattening trade the healthy life of the farmyard chick 

 is vindicated. None but the common fowl can stand 

 the cramming the fowl that as a sign of health 

 clings to the original red livery of its wild ancestor. 

 It is so here and it is so in America. The " Sussex 

 Red " is one of the oldest breeds, and whether it is 

 one that has escaped being bred for colour, or whether 

 some one, despairing of his black breeds and his 

 white ones, poured them together, with atavistic 

 results, cannot be known. It is an honest fowl, a good 

 layer in winter and in summer, a breeder of healthy 

 and hardy chicks, a maker of white and wholesome 

 meat, a triumph of wholesome farm breeding. By 

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