IN THE POULTRY YARD. 35 
and: that all you had to do was to wind her up three times a day 
with a little corn and the eggs would roll into the hopper. 
These are not imaginary instances, but actual cases. Of minor 
instances the number is innumerable, and I myself have known at 
least a dozen people who have been smitten with the hen fever and 
have sunk money. But all this did not fully convince me that 
poultry could not be kept, or that Z could not keep it profitably. 
I have been told that in the famous “ Warwick Woodlands,” so 
well described by Frank Forrester, there is a poultry farm managed 
by a colored man who keeps 3,000 fowls and makes a hanilsome 
profit. There is also the poultry establishment of Mr. Baker, in 
New Jersey, in which eighty thousand dollars have been invested 
in houses, incubators, etc., etc. In regard to the financial success 
of this enterprise I am not informed. ‘he gigantic establishments 
of De Sora, Don San Fuentes, etc., etc., so graphically described 
by Burnham, Lewis and others, are mere myths, and have no 
existence, 
Looking back over an experience of many years I could recall 
my first acquaintance with the poultry yard, where the hens were 
always a source of ready money at times when other crops were 
not available. And even now I could recall from that long-past 
experience facts and methods which seem to be forgotten, and yet 
are well worthy of being kept in use. In those days there were no 
stolen nests—no lost eggs, and yet our poultry had free range over 
many acres—those places from which they were to be excluded 
being carefully fenced so as to keep the poultry out. Well do I 
remember how we depended, with a trust that I never remember 
to have been betrayed, upon the hens returning to their own roosts 
at might. Although they numbered some hundreds, and during 
the day spread themselves over a wide expanse, they always re- 
turned at eventide. In those days no laying hen ever left her 
house in the morning until she had laid her egg It is the easiest 
thing in the world to tell whether or not a hen is going to lay an 
egg during the next twelve hours; and well do I remember out 
old hen wife examining each hen, and letting those without eges 
go, while those that were going to lay. were kept in. When a small 
