CROPS AND PROFITS. 193 







The young Guineas, like the young turkeys, are 



delicate however, and suffer from sudden changes of 

 temperature. Give them what care you will, and all 

 the dietetic luxuries of the books, and on some fine 

 morning, you shall find the half of a brood moping 

 and staggering, and drooping out of life. The 

 young turkeys are even more subject to infantile 

 ailments, and their invalid caprices outmatch all the 

 nostrums of the doctors. Yet some old spectacled 

 lady in the back country, with nothing better than a 

 turned-up barrel in the way of shelter, will by an 

 easy and indescribable ' knack ' of treatment, rear 

 such broods as cannot be rivalled by any literal 

 execution of the rules of Boswell and Doyle. 



Beyond the age of six weeks, however, danger 

 mostly ceases, and the poults have a good chance 

 barring the foxes of coming to the honors of de- 

 capitation ; and I know few prettier farm^ sights, 

 than a squadron of pure white turkeys, marching 

 over new mown grass-land, with their skirmishers 

 deployed on either flank, and rioting among the 

 grasshoppers. It is essential that both Guinea-fowl 

 and Turkeys have free and wide range ; they are 

 natural wanderers ; my hens submit to a curtailment 

 of their liberties with more cheerfulness ; but there 

 is after all, no biped of which I have knowledge, 

 that does not glory in freedom. The Black Spanish 



