CROPS AND PROFITS. 195 



full supply in giving hens warm quarters a closed 

 house, with double walls, and its front entirely of 

 glass ; here, with water constantly running, an 

 ample ash box and gravel bed, full feeding, not 

 forgetting scraps of meat, and occasional vegetable 

 diet the hens make a summer of the winter, and 

 reward all care. If the weather be very warm, they 

 are allowed a little run in the adjoining barn-yard 

 (their winter home being, in fact, a rustic transmuta 

 tion of an ancient cow-shed). Any considerable 

 chilliness of the atmosphere, however, if they are 

 long exposed to it, checks their laying propensities, 

 and two or three days of housing are needed to 

 restore the due equilibrium. 



The Roman writers give us cruel hints in regard 

 to the fattening of fowls, which I have never had the 

 heart to try. They go beyond the rules of the 

 Strasburg poulterers in harshness ; and that elegant 

 heathen Columella, has the effrontery to advise that 

 the legs of young doves be broken, in order to cram 

 them the more quickly. Such suggestions belonged, 

 of right, to a period when Roman ladies Sabina, 

 and Delia, and Octavia looked down coolly on 

 gladiators, gashing their lives out with bare sabres, 

 and then lolled home in chariots, to dine on thrushes, 

 fatted in the dark. We, good Christians that we 

 are, shudder at thought of such barbarism ; we pit 



