330 THE FAT OF THE LAND 
his incubator overtime that season, so as to fill 
our houses by autumn. I should need 800 or 
900 pullets to make our quota good, for most of 
the older hens would have to be disposed of in 
the autumn,—all but about 200, which would 
be kept until the following spring to breed from. 
I believe that a three-year-old hen that has 
shown the egg habit is the best fowl to breed 
from, and it is the custom at Four Oaks to re- 
serve specially good pens for this purpose. The 
egg habit is unquestionably as much a matter of 
heredity as the milk or the fat producing habit, 
and should be as carefully cultivated. With this 
end in view, Sam added young cockerels to four 
of his best-producing flocks on January 1, and by ~ 
the 15th he was able to start his incubators. 
Breeding and feeding for eggs is on the same 
principle as feeding and breeding for milk. It 
is no more natural for a hen to lay eggs for 
human consumption than it is for the robin to do 
so, or for the cow to give more milk than is suffi- 
cient for her calf. Man’s necessity has made 
demands upon both cow and hen, and man’s in- 
telligence has converted individualists into social- 
ists in both of these races. They no longer live 
for themselves alone. As the cow, under favor- 
able conditions, finds pleasure in giving milk, so 
does the hen under like conditions take delight 
in giving eggs, — else why the joyous cackle when 
leaving her nest after doing her full duty? She 
gloats over it, and glories in it, and announces 
