FRENCH PRACTICE- FOOD. 71 



game hens began to lay as soon as their chickens were 

 three weeks old ; the consequence of high keep and 

 good attendance of the cocks. 



A correspondent in France (1815) informed me, 

 that my little book had reached that country, so ce- 

 lebrated for poultry, and that the good housewives 

 of France made themselves very merry with my 

 practice of restricting the cock to so few as half-a- 

 dozen hens, their allowance being twenty, or even 

 twenty-five. The French Naturalists, also, in their 

 new Dictionary, I find, have copied and recommended 

 this liberal practice. What difference, in such respect, 

 may subsist between the soil or animals of England 

 and France, I am not qualified to determine ; I can 

 only assure the reader that my rule is the result 

 of long and actual experience. A certain English 

 traveller, twenty years since, brought home and pub- 

 lished an account almost equally extraordinary of 

 French men. That point also I leave to abler judges. 

 As to poultry keepers in any country, it will readily 

 be believed that they make few experiments, and 

 still fewer records ; and the keeper of two or three 

 score hens, at any rate breeding a considerable stock 

 from such a number, does not trouble himself to inves- 

 tigate the merits of his practice, satisfied that it is 

 according to the established mode. 



QUANTITIES OF FOOD. By an experiment made 

 in July, 1806, a measured peck of good barley kept 

 in a high style of condition the following stock, con- 

 fined, and having no other provision : one cock, 

 three hens, three March chickens, six April, and six 

 May ditto, during eight clear days, and one feed 



