36 WINTER BREEDING. 



the winter, and nearly the same has resulted with 

 respect to pigs, on a damp clayey or marshy soil. 

 This I request should be understood with some grains 

 of allowance in respect to the soils on which my stock 

 of both kinds was reared, in three counties. They 

 were clayey, wet, and benumbing, and my neigh- 

 bours were in a similar predicament with myself. It 

 is a mere statement of facts. I have referred in the 

 sequel to those dry soils, better adapted to breed- 

 ing of poultry, as they are also to breeding and 

 keeping of sheep. I give merely my own actual ex- 

 perience, without doubting, that many breeders more 

 fortunately situated, have succeeded with winter stock, 

 though, in the best situations, winter may bring with 

 it considerable risk. A record, however, of the ex- 

 perimented fact may remain, as a caution to breeders 

 upon unfavourable soils. The following is a remark- 

 able instance of attention and success in winter 

 breeding. 



The late Mrs. Adams, of Ditchford Farm, near 

 Shipton on Stour, in Worcestershire, for many years 

 devoted her time and attention to the breeding and 

 rearing of winter chickens and spring ducklings, with 

 which she constantly attended Campden and Shipton 

 markets, where her poultry was sought by the neigh- 

 bouring gentry with avidity, and generally fetched good 

 prices ; the superiority of this good woman's poultry 

 was proverbial: as a breeder and feeder, she stood 

 pre-eminent ; her chickens were always ready for the 

 table by new year's day, and her ducks were earlier 

 in the market than those of any other person in that 

 neighbourhood. This is given, not as a novelty, but 



