384 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



But, leaving the delightful and seductive fields of classic lore, 

 let us proceed with our report. 



To E. G. Berry, of North Danvers, for his bantam hen, with 

 her three broods of chickens, all of the present " year of 

 grace" 1854, she having hatched no fewer than twenty-six 

 chicks at her three several settings. Now, here is a bantam 

 " as is a bantam," an example to all clucking hendom for per- 

 sistent practice in the vocation whereunto she was born. 

 Surely, if the younglings had been asked, " Does your mother 

 know you are out ? " they must have given a negative reply ; 

 for what mother's memory could be equal to knowing it of 

 such a multitude ? 



To E. C. Bartlett, of Lawrence, for his bantam cock, accom- 

 panied by eight chicks, which said tender and chicken-hearted 

 cock cared for, brooded over, fed, nursed and reared, when 

 forsaken by their unnaturally cruel mother, who had scarcely 

 '' found them out " of the shell when she forsook them to the 

 cold charity of an unfeeling world. And yet in justice to her 

 it must be said, that, if cold in her affections, she was warm in 

 her ovarium ; since, immediately on hatching and deserting her 

 brood, she returned to her nest and became fertilely parturient 

 and oviparous. Instances of this paternal maternity are not 

 uncommon in' the gallinaceous race. In the July number of 

 the " Cottage Gardener," (1854,) an excellent work, published 

 in London, mention is made of a brooding Shanghae cock which 

 took charge of a brood of chicks whose mother left them at a 

 fortnight old. In the August number of the same work two 

 young cockerels are noticed, which were brooding Dorking, 

 Chittiprat, Spanish and Cochin chickens, from three weeks to 

 two months old. And in the September number a correspond- 

 ent speaks of a white Shanghae cock, to whose care some 

 chicks were delivered as an experiment, and who clucked and 

 called and scratched for and fed them with the greatest care, 

 carrying them on his back and comforting them in every possi- 

 ble way by day, and at night brooding them under his wings. 

 The reverse of this, in the crowing of hens, is also not un- 

 common. The writer remembers one among some liens kept 

 in Boston by his father. So then we have cock-hens and hen- 

 cocks ; and Nature is not always true to herself; though that is 



