THK THAI" NEST TEXT BOOK 7 



may not know. Suffice it to say that il is considerable, both ways. 



The Poultry Press, long' may it live and prosper, make a business of 

 giving both general and specific instruction in poultry culture. Some 

 of this instruction is from competent sources and is reliable, some of it 

 we will not discuss here. There are a number of good poultry papers 

 and I have no doubt that there would be more if Mr. Edward C. 

 Madden of Washington, L). C. kept hens and realized the importance of 

 promoting the poultry business in all of its legitimate branches. May 

 he never get a stale egg in his Tom-and- Jerry. 



This is a special book issued for a specific purpose. Primarily to 

 show how to make and use the Ideal Trap Nest under a license con- 

 trolled by my patents. 



I have thought best to include a discussion of several subjects, some 

 of them intimately and others remotely connected with the use of trap 

 nests. 



These articles have been written at different times and we feel differ- 

 ently at different times. I am sorry that photographs of my feel- 

 ings at different times were not ready in time to have cuts made. 

 What may seem to be a strange intermingling of seriousness and 

 foolishness in some places, is easily accounted for. When a 

 man begins to read up "the reason why chicks die in the shell" 

 and gets to the point where he is asked to consider if the hen does 

 not feed the chick through the shell, hence it starves to death in 

 the incubator, he must move slowly. When his manly brow begins to 

 throb and what appears to be the unquestionable fact that freshly- 

 fertilized eggs are more likely to hatch well in a well-operated incuba- 

 tor than under the average sitting hen comes in to perplex, it is well 

 to unbend and indulge in a little harmless frivolity. This takes off the 

 strain and he can more safely take up the latest "Law of Sex." If the 

 house cat happens to be a female she will be a good subject for ex- 

 periment. Any rule that will work with her will also work in the 

 poultry yard. When a youth I spent a short time each year, for sev- 

 eral years, on the peaceful shores of Lake Winnepesaukee but I failed 

 to note that a quiet and contented mode of life and absence of friction 

 with the outer world and its strenuous (immortal word) struggle for 

 existence and supremacy had produced so many females among the 

 population that soprano and contralto were the only parts taught in the 

 winter singing schools. Probably this was because I was not there in 

 the winter. The reader who fails to catch my point is referred to 

 current gossip in poultrydom. 



A talented writer who has published a very good book that claims 

 to contain "all that there is to know" about poultry keeping has not 

 yet answered the following perfectly reasonable question addressed to 

 him last spring by the author of this book: "Can you furnish me with 



