«36 LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING — SECOND SERIES. 



Every novice in the show room, anil I thinli I may say every vetenin as well, is possessed of 

 the ambition to put into an exhiliition a string of liirds of his own breeilins; IhiU will win prizes 

 enough to give him high honor as a breeder. To the novice it looks like a matter of buvins; 

 good stock to start with and carefully selecting and reserving his choicest specimens. The 

 veteran sees the matter difl'erentlv. He knows that while it might be an easy matter to do that 

 if be bad the field to himself, with so many others striving to do the same thing there will 

 almost invariably be a general division of prizes in any competition which is a competition in 

 fact as well as in name. It is only at rare intervals that a breeder of a variety in which there 

 is strong competition produces in his own yards as many first class specimens as he needs to 

 enter in a strong class with reasonable expectation of getting his share of the prizes given. The 

 really first class specimens are as a rule produced a few here and a few there — many of them 

 by persons who either do not caie to exhibit or would rather part with them at a good figure 

 than take the trouble, risk, and uncertainty of winning in exhibition. Hence there are every 

 year for sale a good many liirds sucli as the breeders who wish to make large displays need to 

 supplement their own production. 



The rules of shows generally require that the bird exhibited shall be the boiia fide property 

 of the owner. That means that it must be his absolutely without any understanding or reserva- 

 tion. Occasionally at some show or in some special competition it is required that only birds 

 ired by the exhibitor be entered liy him, but as a rule the shows make no requirement of this 

 nature going back of present ownership. The buying and selling of exhiliition fowls cannot by 

 any reasonable interpretation or application of common principles of right and wrong be made 

 a wrong or even an objectionable practice. On the contrary, in its legitimate phases it may be 

 «aid to be the most important feature of the interest in standard bred poultry. 



But about this entirely legitimate feature of the business have grown up several aliuses, most 

 <;onspicuous of which is the lending and borrowing of specimens for exhibition. 



This is carried on in two ways:— By simple borrowing and lending with not even a nominal 

 "Change in the actual ownership of the bird ; and by fictitious sale, or sale on such terms that it 

 is substantially fictitious. , 



The practice began with simple borrowing and lending, but as poultry exhibitors generally 

 ■frowned on it and general opinion would not condone it as it does some of the more prevalent 

 lorms of faking, those who wished to avail themselves of the use of exhibition specimens 

 ■which they could not buy oiltright, and those who for various reasons were willing that their 

 ■Siirds should be exhibited by others, devised the plan of selling birds conditionally, the bird to 

 he returned after the show, and the price paid for it to be refunded. Such an arrangement is 

 ■of course a mere juggle with right and wrong. The fiction of a sale does no more than make it 

 inipossilile to prove the facts in the case until after the awards are made and the premiums 

 paid. It does not often happen that birds "lent" in this way get back to their owner without 

 Interested competitors of the exhibitor finding it out sooner or later. Actual and positlve.proof 

 of wrong doing and identification of birds is however so difficult that so far no effective check 

 4jas been put on the practice. I do not think anyone has ever attempted to justify it. The 

 advantages to be gained by it, both for those who borrow and those who lend, are so great that 

 the temptation to make arrangements of this kind are very strong, and though the proportion 

 of ^pecimens in any show not actually the property of the exhibitor in whose name they are 

 entered is proliably always very small, I suppose that there are few exhibitors who have not at 

 S(ime time, perhaps in a very small way, yielded to the temptation to lend or to borrow. JIany 

 « III) would not exhibit birds not their own, have occasionally lent birds. JIany who think the 

 ■jiractlce wrong have in emergencies borrowed birds. With the great majority such lapses have 

 ■lieen exceptional, not haliitual. 



The disposition to lend— to do a fellow fancier a favor — is a manifestation of an excellent 

 tniit in human nature. With many fanciers the need of not indulging it does not become 

 apparent until, baying indulged it, they find (hat they must share in the common condemnation 

 of the borrower. 



The opportunity toOjorrow, siiy, at the time when a loss of or injury to a specimen upon 

 ■w;hich an exhibitor was relying has greatly diminished his prospects of making a good win- 

 ning, presents itself as an evil of very small importance compared with the loss from which 



