176 



CHAPTER XIV. 



BUYING, SELLING, AND EXPORTING. 



No amateur can get on without occasionally buying other stock ; and every fancier has generally 

 some surplus which he wants to sell; hence a very few words on these subjects may not be 

 out of place. 



Our own experience is, that it is easier to sell first-class birds at very high prices than stock of 

 a more moderate quality. It is within our personal knowledge that one poultry-man, at the close of 

 1S71, sold three cockerels for the aggregate sum of £^2 ! — hence we need hardly stop to prove that 

 there is solid remunerative return for the judicious breeder ; and we need only add that the very 

 best birds cannot be obtained at small sums. We make this remark because we have repeatedly 

 received letters asking the prices of stock, describing what is wanted in words that exhaust all the 

 perfections of any "Standard of Excellence," only to find the remark at the end that it is useless 

 to ask more than a moderate price, as such will not be paid! To write in such terms is simply the 

 presumption of ignorance ; and we speak the literal truth when we say that eminent breeders are in 

 the constant habit of refusing such sums as i^20 for their best cocks or pairs of hens, if they think 

 they cannot spare them without injur)' to their own breeding prospects. To expect to get perfect 

 birds for such sums as many people seem to imagine is ridiculous ; indeed, a quite perfect bird is 

 perhaps never seen. Yet fanciers every now and then receive such letters as the following, which 

 came to us quite lately, and which we preserved as a curious specimen of the class to which it 

 belongs. The Italics arc those of the writer : — 



" Dear Sir, — Kindly let me know the lowest price you can send me a pen of Dark Brahmas to win the cup at 

 Dublin. They must be perfect in alt points, and price must not be very high. " Yours truly, 



" L. Weight, Esq. * * * 



" P.S. — They must be certain winners or of no use." 



A breeder will always buy for some specific end ; and we have ere now been glad to give ;^5 

 for a heavily-hocked cock, and double that sum for a bird likely to prove valuable as stock, though 

 not fit to show in good company. The best plan when the judgment can be trusted — and we have 

 already advised that no one should buy to any extent before — is either to visit some first-class yard, 

 and there pick out and ask the price of the bird wanted, or to examine the class at some large 

 shew where birds are extensively entered for sale. At such a show as Birmingham a good judge 

 can almost always select a sound, valuable bird, at a very moderate price — such as meets his 

 particular want, whatever it may be — but not a certain winner at the next show he sends him to, 

 unless he will pay a corresponding figure. The same can be done from a good yard ; but in the 

 latter case no price can guarantee a purchaser's getting the very best bird of the year, for the 

 simple reason that, however good a vendor may know his bird to be, it cannot be known till after 

 competition whether some one else may not have one a little better. We knew a curious case last 

 season, in which a certain breeder sent a Buff" Cochin cockerel to an early show, so clearly ahead of 



