* 
IN THE POULTRY YARD. 24 
Olds Experiences and New Plans. 
AIROWN had never given any personal attention to his 
poultry; the selection of the stock that was to be kept 
was left pretty much to the servant girl, and she thought 
she was doing a wise thing when she killed and cooked the game 
cock and allowed one of his sons—a larger and more showy bird— 
to take his place. As the mother of this bird was of no particular 
breed, he, himself, was a mere mongrel, and as: he was related, on 
the father’s side, to all the young pullets of that year, the conse- 
quence was that the flock lost stamina; and this, and the fact that 
there was only one cock to over fifty hens, explained the small 
hatches—many of the eggs proving sterile. 
Now, I had resolved that as soon as I got fairly under way I 
would make everything on the place profitable in every sense. If 
we grew vegetables, they must be the best of their kind and pro- 
duced at a moderate expense. Carrying this rule into the poultry 
yard, I determined to procure a good cock from some neighbor 
and put him with half a dozen hens, and so raise a new flock of 
hens that would be vigorous and prolific. I therefore killed off 
the rooster and looked about for another, it being my intention to 
raise a sufficient number of pullets to entirely replace the old stock, 
with, perhaps, the exception of about a dozen hens, which struck 
me as being specially fitted for mothers. 
I therefore visited my neighbors and ‘examined their flocks, for 
the purpose of procuring such a bird but, I ‘must say, with very 
oor success. The farmers, as a general rule, had allowed their 
poultry to breed after a sort of hap-hazard method; the conse- 
‘quence was that their stock, not being very superior in the first 
‘place, soon became worse; and I found that Brown’s poultry, run 
-down as it was, was better than theirs. Several villagers claimed 
to keep pure breeds, but, as a general rule, they were not what I 
