1 8 POULTRY CULTURE 



of the use of artificial methods which most fired the imaginations 

 of those considering the financial possibilities of poultry culture, and 

 though, in a limited way and in a few lines, the scale of operations 

 with poultry has been greatly enlarged by the use of artificial 

 methods, they are more generally valuable as supplementing natural 

 methods than as a substitute for them. 



Exhibitions. The first public exhibition of poultry in America 

 was held in the Public Garden in Boston, in 1849. This exhibition, 

 more than any other one event, gave impetus to the growing excite- 

 ment over remarkable kinds of poultry. In England, a few years 

 earlier, a great poultry show had been held in the Crystal Palace, 

 London. Both of these shows were noteworthy for the number and 

 variety of exhibits which they contained. Each in its own country 

 may be said to mark, as exactly as such a change can be marked, the 

 end of the ancient and the beginning of the modern period in poultry 

 culture. With them began the organization of poultry interests. 

 Following them, organizations of poultrymen multiplied, and shows 

 were held in many places. In the United States the Civil War 

 drew attention for a while from such interests, but hardly had 

 hostilities ceased when the interest in poultry began to be active. 

 Poultry exhibitions, both separately and as an adjunct of agri- 

 cultural fairs, have been one of the most important factors in the 

 development of the industry. 



Poultry literature of the early period. Before 181 5, when 

 Moubray's first book appeared, the only books in the English lan- 

 guage exclusively on poultry were a few treatises on gamecocks 

 and cock fighting, and the work of Mascall, published in 1581. 

 Moubray's book went through a number of editions and seems to 

 have met the popular demand for twenty years or more. Then, just 

 as the period was closing, a number of books appeared. Between 

 1840 and i860, and especially in the ten years from 1845 to 1855, 

 were issued more books undertaking a complete presentation of 

 the subject of poultry culture than were produced in the following 

 half-century. Compared with this output the latter period seems 

 strangely barren of books, but a full analysis of poultry literature 

 shows that the books which came out so rapidly, and relatively in 

 such abundance, at the beginning of the modern period, are really 

 the posthumous literature of the early period. Their influence on 



