HOW TO BEGIN 43 
pedigree fowls. When they arrived they looked, as he said, 
“like nothing on earth,” and rather than go to the trouble of send- 
ing them back and trusting to luck to get his money returned, he 
killed the lot. He would not run the risk of introducing such a 
“mangy ” lot into his pens, where, if disease were to break out, 
it would be disastrous. 
If this sort of thing happens to a professional poultryman, what 
are we to expect from a mere amateur ? 
The poultry papers have now instituted a deposit system 
whereby the purchase money is sent to them, and is not delivered 
to the seller until the buyer notifies the editor that he is satisfied 
with the purchase. In buying adult fowls I strongly advise every- 
one to use the deposit system. Of course, if one is dealing with 
responsible and respectable firms, such as Messrs Cam, Tom 
Barron, Will Barron, Edgar Watson, Jonathan Collinson, the 
Molassine Company and a host of others, you may depend on 
getting what you pay for. 
In the early days of my poultry-keeping I bought four different 
lots of fowls through the advertisements of people I knew nothing 
about. Two of the lots were absolute swindles, one was fairly 
good, and one very good. I would not dream now of buying fowls 
from an unknown man without having the option of returning 
them if unsatisfactory. 
There are various ways in which the amateur can make a be- 
ginning. Having determined upon the breed of birds he is to keep, 
he can obtain them in various ways, depending largely on the time 
of year. If he wants to start in the late autumn, say October or 
November, one plan is to buy fowls that have passed their first 
laying year. They will then be about eighteen to twenty months 
old, and will be getting over, or have passed, their first moult. This 
is perhaps the best season to start, because yearling fowls are 
then plentiful and cheap. The large poultry-farmers are clearing 
out their older stock to make room for the pullets they have 
reared during the spring and summer and are just commenced to 
lay. A fowl that has passed its first laying season should be pur- 
chasable for about four to five shillings. A pullet of six months 
