BREEDING 187 
mysteries of breeding, for it is well known that certain pure breeds 
and certain crosses will yield large, juicy birds with tender white 
flesh. This question is dealt with elsewhere under the heading of 
Table Poultry. 
It is when one comes to the question of eggs and their increase 
that the difficulties have to be faced. And yet these difficulties 
are quickly melting away. An insignificant number of years ago 
it was a rare thing to get any individual fowl to lay 200 eggs per 
annum. To-day it is so common that one pays no heed to it. 
A few years ago it was a problem to get an average of anything 
over 120 eggs per bird, but to-day averages of 150 are just ordinary, 
and in special cases, with selected birds, an average of 200 is looked 
upon as normal, At a recent laying competition in Australia the 
average number of eggs laid by the winning pen was the extra- 
ordinary one of 288 per bird. There are authenticated instances 
of individual birds laying just over 800 eggs per annum. What 
one bird has been bred to do all birds can be bred to do. It is 
only a question of time and careful breeding. 
865 Eacs PER ANNUM 
Theoretically a bird may be bred to lay 365 eggs per annum. 
It has been claimed that certain fowls have laid two eggs in twenty- 
four hours, but it has never been claimed that any bird has laid 
four eggs in forty-eight hours. Even the modern Ananias has 
stopped short of that. The installation of electric light in the 
laying-house was at one time going to work wonders. It was to 
cheat the bird into mistaking night for day and making it lay two 
eggs where it had laid only one before. Unfortunately light, 
artificial or otherwise, hardly enters into the problem, and certainly 
everlasting light would be more likely to lead to disaster than to 
a multiplicity of eggs. Just as you cannot get a quart into a pint 
bottle so you cannot get two eggs into the fowl’s working day. 
Her internal economy may be speeded up to a certain extent by 
foods so that. she will do in one year what she at one time took 
two years to accomplish, but you cannot regulate her like an 
