AAPAdddDAB 
IN THE POULTRY YARD. 85 
But on the south side [ had my very agreeable neighbor, with 
whom Brown had had so many quarrels. As I have alreacly stated, 
his Jand along my line was unimproved woods, left just as it came 
from the hand of Mother Nature, and it would have been impos- 
sible for the hens to do any harm there. Knowing my man, however, 
Terected a fence along the whole of the division line and alittle be- 
yond, so as to prevent any possibility of the hens “turning the cor- 
ner.” As I was anxious to have this fence perfectly secure against 
even my best fliers, I used wire netting three feet wide, placed on 
a tight fence 2 feet high and surmounted by a single wire raised 10 
inches above the wire net. ‘Ihis excluded everything. ‘The little 
chickens could not get through the tight fence, and the wire on 
top very effectually prevented the hens from flying over. ‘They 
always aimed for the top of the wire netting, and striking against the 
single wire, which was almost invisible, they fell back into their 
own grounds, and arose wiser if not happier fowls. 
On the west there was a public road, and I have never known 
our hens to cross it, especially as our own orchard and garden lay 
between their’ houses and the land on the other side. While the 
garden crops were growing, the garden was fenced in with portable 
fence, which was removed in the fall, so that the birds might pick 
up the waste. In the orchard they were always supposed to do a 
great deal more good than harm. ‘ 
It was very obvious that by giving each bird the range of the 
entire place it had a freedom and a chance for exercise which it could 
not have ina small yard. A thousand fowls on four acres, each 
bird having the entire range of the whole place, are far less 
crowded than 250 birds on one acre, and these again are less 
crowded than ten birds would be on 1-25th of an acre, just as a 
man confined to a single house is more of a prisoner than any one 
of a million of men confined in a large city, about whose streets 
he can wander at his pleasure, his “range” being bounded by 
miles. But if this city were divided up into squares—one for each in- 
habitant—and every man was confined to his own square, the prison. 
life thus forced upon the people would be unendurable. If my pres- 
ent stock of poultry were divided off into small lots, each lot in a per 
