BOOK VIIL V. 22-25 



pounded salt is rubbed into the wounds. Further, 23 

 this disease chiefly arises when the fowls are suffering 

 from the cold and from poor feeding, and also when, 

 during the summer, water standing in the poultry- 

 yard is drunk, and, again, when they are allowed to 

 eat figs and unripe grapes and not to take their fill 

 of them, foods from which fowls should certainly be 

 kept away. A method of making them loathe them 

 is to pick the wild grapes from the bushes while they 

 are still unripe and put them before them when they 

 are hungry cooked with fine wheat-meal, for being 

 disgusted by the taste the birds refuse every kind of 

 grape. A similar method can be employed also with 

 the wild-fig, which being cooked with their food and 

 given to the birds, creates a distaste for figs also. A 24 

 practice too, which is employed for all other live- 

 stock, of choosing the better and selling the worse 

 should be observed also in the case of poultry, in 

 order that annually during the autumn, when they 

 cease to be productive, their number may be 

 diminished. We shall get rid of the old hens, that is, 

 those which are more than three years old, also those 

 which are not very prolific or are not very good nurses, 

 and, above all, those which eat their own and other 

 hens' eggs, likewise also those which are beginning 

 to crow like cocks or even to strut about, and also 

 late-born chickens, which have been hatched from the 

 solstice onwards and could not reach their full growth. 

 The same system will not be observed for the cock-birds, 

 but we shall keep those which are well-bred as long as 

 they can impregnate the hens ; for good quality in a 25 

 mating male is rather rare among these birds. Also at 



* atque etiam calcare om. 8A : atque calcare a : aut etiam 

 calcare c. 



355 



