POULTRY. 295 



wanting in hardiness when young as to render them valueless 

 to the public at large. 



The Bolton Grey when pure is a fowl of great beauty and a 

 most excellent layer. If " bred to a feather," while the neck 

 is pure white the mottling of black will pass entirely around 

 the breast — a characteristic very rarely seen even in tiie premium 

 fowls of our fair. In a lot recently imported from England, 

 I notice that on one of my fowls the mottling is improved 

 upon, by a lozenge-shaped white figure developed on each 

 feather, giving the bird rare beauty. Tlie objections to the 

 Bolton Grey breed are serious ones. They mature for the table 

 slowly, and are then poor in quality, of small size, and cold, 

 bluish hue. Their eggs are very small. The hens have a bad 

 habit of dying without leaving on record any sufficient cause 

 therefor ; you go into the coop and find one of your finest fowls 

 on the nest for two or three days in succession with a comb 

 rather unusually red ; (now this redness of the comb is a 

 certificate presented by other fowls in proof that their internal 

 egg-producing apparatus is in full working order ;) and you tell 

 John that " really that Bolton Grey hen does beat all in the 

 poultry line that was ever heard of, seen or read of; indeed 

 you more than half believe she is but a mass of eggs slightly 

 covered with feathers ! " John, filled with respectful admiration 

 approaches the prodigy with stealthy steps, looks closely and — 

 proclaims her dead ! Probably all who have ever reared the 

 Bolton Grey fowl have had some such unfortunate experience. 

 The Asiatic breeds which were so widely disseminated a few 

 years since have been a nut for amateurs to crack. They have 

 generally been denounced as, on the whole, a nuisance. Let 

 them have fair play ; many of them are ungainly, gaunt gor- 

 mandizers, maturing very late, and then a large-boned sharp- 

 breasted race ; still there are some exceptions to the general 

 rule. It will be noticed that three of the statements accom- 

 panying this report relate to one variety of the Asiatic breeds 

 commonly known as " Brahraa-poutre " fowl. The fowl termed 

 " Booby," exhibited by Mr. Ladd, is undoubtedly nearly allied 

 to that variety, and a better season's work than her's could not 

 be anticipated from any breed of fowls. For early maturity no 

 fowls could excel those of Mr. Barnaby, which began to lay 

 at four months and twenty days from the egg, excepting those 



