CHAPTER XLIII 

 GUINEA FOWLS 



Nature of Guineas. — Generally speaking, until recent years 

 the guinea has merely been tolerated on the farm, and seldom 

 regarded as profitable. Semi-wild by nature, noisy, flighty and 

 unmanageable, they exhausted the patience of the farmer and 

 were too troublesome for serious consideration. Their chief 

 virtue, it seemed, was their well-known habit of setting up a 

 discordant chorus at the slightest provocation. If a hawk ap- 

 peared, or an animal or person approached the barnyard, these 

 alarmists immediately burst into a raucous denunciation. Woe 

 betide those who trespass on lands where guineas abound ; nothing 

 seems to escape their notice. 



Left to their own devices guineas will skirt the edges of civil- 

 ized poultrydom, multiplying in distant fields and hedge rows, 

 but rarely reproducing more than their own number. Though 

 a hen will often hatch a large brood, it is seldom that she man- 

 ages to raise more than two or three chicks, and often not that 

 many. For some obscure reason the mother guinea does not 

 seem to realize that her little ones are frail creatures, unable to 

 withstand extremes of heat and cold, moisture and long tramps 

 afield. Their habits with their young seem to be about as sense- 

 less as their noise, which probably accounts in a large measure 

 for their culture having been neglected. 



Snows and stormy weather sometimes drive the guineas to. 

 the barnyard for food and shelter, but as a rule they are very 

 independent. Therefore, having cost the farmer nothing, he 

 was satisfied to sell them in an indiff^erent market for forty or 

 fifty cents a pair, or to tolerate them for the sake of an occa- 

 sional Sunday dinner for the family. No one will ever become 

 rich raising guineas, and it is hardly likely that any one will 



554 



