THE HISTOKY OF THE HBN FEVER. 808 



be presumed that I have had some share of experience in 

 this business, pi-actically, and I think I can speak advis- 

 edly on this subject. As far back as during the jears 

 1839, '40 and '41, I erected, in Roxbury, a poultry estab- 

 lishment on a large scale, upon a good location, where I had 

 the advantages of ample space, stwenty separate hen-houses, 

 running water and a fine pond on the premises, glass- 

 houses (cold, and artificially heated, for winter use), and 

 every appurtenance, needful or ornamental, was at my 

 command. 



I purchased and bred all kinds of domestic fowls there, 

 and they were attended with care from year's end to year's 

 end. But there was tio profit whatever resulting from 

 the undertaking, — and why ? 



The very week that a mass of poultry — say three to 

 five hundred fowls — is put together upon one spot, they 

 begin to suffer, and fail, and retrograde, and die. No amount 

 of care, cleanliness or watching, can. evade this result. In 

 a body (over a dozen to twenty together), they cannot 

 thrive ; nor can the owner coax or force them to lay eggs, 

 by any known process.* 



* Since this was written, I find in the Country Gentleman a communica- 

 tion from L. F. Allen, Esq., on this very subject, in which he says that 

 " A correspondent desires to know how to build a chicken-houSe for ' about 

 one thousand fowls.' If my poor opinion is worth anything, he will not 

 butid it at all. Fowls, in any large number, will not thrive. Although I 



