60 COMMON SENSE 
occasionally a small pen for experiments, or to keep a cock by 
himself, or to keep two or three hens that I wished to test. . The 
ordinary breeding houses and yards would, however, answer all 
these purposes very well, and I determined not to multiply models 
and patterns if I could help it. 
My first work, therefore, was to design suitable houses of these 
two kinds; and to construct one of each as a model. If this 
model worked well, then more could-be made like it, and- by mak- 
ing only one of each, I left myself an opportunity to introduce any 
improvement that experience might suggest. Fortunately, I had 
as a study a very excellent model, though one that was rather too 
elaborate for the end that I now had in view. 
Amongst other buildings erected by the former owner, was a poul- 
try house of moderate dimensions, and no great cost, but the most 
perfect in its design and appointments that I have ever seen, and I 
have examined'some very-costly ones. It was intended as a “ fainily” 
poultry house, calculated for fifty hens and ‘able to accommodate an 
additional one hundred young birds during the fall and winter, 
while they were waiting to be drafied into the fattening coops. 
Mr. Brown told me, that it was designed by a friend: of his, an 
engineer of considerable talent and broad scientific knowledge, and 
he placed in my hands the drawings, specifications and descriptions, 
‘so that I might fully understand its construction and the best 
method of managing it. It certainly differed radically from all the 
poultry houses described in the books (and I have quite a collec- 
tion of works on the subject) and as the designer gave his reasons for 
everything he did, it was easily seen that in every. point it adapted 
itself to the nature of the fowls, and to the dictates of true Science. 
I will, therefore, give a detailed description of it, and to make this 
more clear will add an engraving. 
Just behind the barn and on the edge of the woodland. there 
was a very pretty knoll the slope of which was quite steep, r in 4, 
as our engineering friend put it. The slope faced directly south, 
and ‘the house was built on the side of this knoll, the enclosure 
stretching along the wood. ‘The house itself was 16 feet rby 14, 
and contained 100 lineal feet of roosting poles which gave an average 
