APRIL 295 



or greenhouse. It is a thing there is always difficulty 

 about buying, and it is not much liked by English people. 

 It wants to be freshly gathered and well dressed. 



There are endless numbers of books on poultry 

 within the reach of everybody ; and lately in Ward, 

 Lock & Co.'s collection of penny handbooks, one has 

 been issued on poultry which is quite useful. But, like 

 all modern books, it is a little above the ordinary keeper 

 of cocks and hens for domestic purposes, making the 

 matter appear unnecessarily difficult. Having a good big 

 field for them to run in here, and the soil being dry and 

 light, I have not had disease amongst my poultry. 

 Among the list of horrible diseases given in this penny 

 book we come to the following sentence : ' Egg-eating. 

 This is rather a vice than a disease, and very troublesome 

 to cure.' The author then gives a cruel account of 

 punishment to be used, in the hopes of disgusting the 

 offender. This is an excellent instance of the trend of 

 modern thought. Egg-eating is, I am sure, solely the 

 result of giving the poor hens an insufficient quantity of 

 the food required by Nature to make their shells hard. 

 Disease among animals is much the same as among 

 people, and is produced often by large quantities of food, 

 but of an improper kind. Diseased poultry means over- 

 crowding, over-feedirig in fact, the fault lies in the way 

 they are managed. Hereditary vice may, we hope, in 

 hens at any rate, be left out of the question. Another 

 thing the author suggests is that when a fowl is killed 

 the entrails should be given to the pigs. This is abso- 

 lutely wrong in my opinion, as pigs are essentially 

 vegetarians, and unclean feeding is apt to make them 

 diseased, which is very serious for the eaters of pork. 



One is always being asked, Does keeping poultry pay ? 

 I never keep strict accounts of what things cost me. 

 Nothing one does at home ever pays, unless one looks 



