POULTRY. 83 



"Poultry," said this practical "writer, "may be considered as part 

 of a husbandman's stock. But the keeping of great numbers of 

 dung-hill fowls will not turn to his advantage ; as it is certain 

 they will never indemnify him for the corn and grain that are requi- 

 site for their support. Yet on a farm a few of them may be useful 

 to pick up what would otherwise be lost. And in this view they 

 seem to be profitable only part of the year. If confined, they will 

 not prosper, though they have a yard of some extent ; if not con- 

 fined, they will be mischievous to the garden and field." This is, 

 perhaps, true enough now. 



But agriculture, like everything else under the sway of humanity, 

 is subject to a change of fashions, or rather, notions. When the 

 Massachusetts tSociety for the Promotion of Agriculture was in the 

 useful vigor of its youth, (as we are informed by that Nestor of 

 Massachusetts farmers, the Hon. Josiah Quincy,) "the great crite- 

 rion of a good farmer was the making of good cider, and the pro- 

 cess of making cider was one of the most studied and elaborate of 

 all subjects of the farmer's attention ; and in point of complexity, 

 length, and minuteness of care and preparation, was but little 

 inferior to the making of glass, porcelain, or Java china." Where 

 are the cider presses now ? 



Other matters were in turn made hobbies of by those self-styled 

 friends of agriculture, who are ever caracoUing around the agricul- 

 tural arena, blowing loudly on their own trumpets, and often filhng 

 their pockets at the expense of those credulous mortals, who seek 

 to avoid labor by finding the philosopher's stone of rural profit. 

 Merino sheep, China Tree corn, Rohan potatoes, Gama grass, and 

 Morus Multicaulis, were each in turn loudly extolled as speedy 

 stepping-stones to agricultural wealth. The "hen fever" followed 

 then — what is to follow it ? 



Raising fancy poultry is no new whim. Peacocks were so es- 

 teemed by King Solomon, that he had them brought him regularly 

 in his Tharsish fleet, and we read in several old Roman works of 

 their pigeon houses and geese ponds, their ducks and fatted capons. 

 Queen Bess was famed for her well-stocked poultry yard, and there 

 is no account of a hennery equal in extent and magnificence to one 

 erected fifty years ago by Lord Penrhyn, at his seat near Wilming- 

 ton, Cheshire county, England. But it was not until 1848 that the 



