IN THE POULTRY YARD. 10g 
however, I sold them for what they would bring, and let them go. 
But even on this basis I found that it paid better to buy the entire 
crate than to ask the dealer to let me pick. 
Next day I found a crate of beautiful White Leghorns. ‘There 
were seven pullets and nine cockse They brought no more than 
the most common stock, and I bought them all. ‘The dealer said 
that he had no doubt that if he had marked them up, and offered 
them as breeding stock, he could have secured a far higher price 
for them, but then the expense and trouble of keeping them in the 
“narrow quarters of a city store would have more than offset the in- 
creased price. His rule was, therefore, to sell all such stock at 
regular market prices and at the earliest possiblemoment. I found 
out afterwards that they came from a party whose strain of Leg- 
horns was really good. The birds were very fine, and I concluded 
that the cockerels were good enough for my breeding pens. I also 
found another crate of large birds of somewhat mixed blood, but 
very handsome, and apparently very healthy. In this crate, strange 
to say, there were no cocks, so that I regarded the purchase as a 
very happy one. 
On talking with the dealers, I found that the crates were filled 
in various ways. Sometimes a farmer or country gentleman, wish- 
ing to lessen his stock, would fill a crate with fowls and send them 
in. Most generally these lots were the culls of the yard, and pre- 
sented a sorry appearance, but occasionally, where the owner had 
fine blood in his stock, the crates were filled with pure bred, hand- 
some birds. Crates of the latter kind were rare, but I managed to 
secure two such crates of Dominiques, one of Light Brahmas, and 
one of Brown Leghorns, besides the crate of White Leghorns 
already mentioned. Other crates were filled by hucksters, who 
bought up fowls from farmers and others, put them together in lots 
of fifteen to twenty-five, and offered them for sale on the streets. 
Buying such crates was a good deal of a lotiery; frequently two or 
three very good birds would be found mixed with a lot of the veri- 
est trash, and sometimes a country henwife would have a lot of 
sick chickens, and they would find their way into these lots, the 
owner being anxious to sell them and get the money before the birds 
