PURE’ AND IMPURE FOODS. 
Edited by C. F. Lancwortny, Pu.D, 
Author of “On Citraconic, Itaconic and Mesaconic Acids,” “‘Fish as Food,” ete. 
“What a Man Eats He Is.” 
THE IMPORTANCE OF POULTRY. ‘ 
Poultry of various kinds has for many 
centuries supplied a large proportion of 
the food of civilized man, and in almost 
every country of the world the poultry in- 
dustry is an important branch of agricul- 
ture. According to the returns of the cen- 
sus for 1900 the total number of chickens, 
including guinea fowls, on farms in the 
United States was 233,598,085; the total 
number of turkeys, 6,599,367; geese, 5,676,- 
863; and ducks, 4,807,358. From the statis- 
tics gathered it appeared that poultry was 
kept on 888 per cent of the farms in this 
country and that the total value of the 
poultry raised on farms in 1899 was $136,- 
891,877. Although many of the hens and 
chickens are bred for their eggs rather than 
their flesh, a good proportion of the birds 
finally appear in the meat market and al- 
most*all the other varieties of poultry are 
bred primarily for the table. It is safe to 
say that 125,000,000 chickens and other 
kinds of poultry are consumed in this coun- 
try each year. 
In its strictly technical sense the word 
poultry is used to describe birds domesti- 
cated for their eggs or flesh. Game birds, 
that is, wild birds killed for sport or food, 
are often used on the table and, as in the 
case of some wild ducks, may be closely 
related to domestic varieties; but as long 
as they are in their wild state they can not 
be classed with poultry. Not all domesti- 
cated birds are necessarily poultry. Pig- 
eons bred for ornament or as carriers would 
not come under that head although they do 
belong there when bred for their flesh. 
Pea fowls were formerly often bred for the 
table and were an important variety of 
poultry, but now they are bred mainly for 
ornament, and form only an almost negli- 
gable part of the poultry industry. 
Thus the kinds of birds included under 
the term poultry may differ in different 
places and at different times. Here and 
in Europe, however, it now commonly in- 
_ cludes common fowls, or chickens, turkeys, 
geese, ducks, guinea fowls, pigeons and, less 
commonly, pea fowls, pheasants and swans. 
Ducks, geese and swans belong to the 
order Natatores, or swimmers, character- 
ized by their web feet and long thick bills. 
Chickens, turkeys, guineafowls, peafowls 
and pheasants belong to the same scien- 
tific order of birds, the Gallinace@, or comb 
bearers, and resemble one another more 
or less closely in structure and _ habits. 
They are distinguished from other birds 
in that the flesh on the breast and wings 
is lighter in color than on the rest of the 
body. This difference in the flesh in dif- 
ferent parts of the birds is not fully un- 
derstood; it is generally supposed that the 
light flesh has less muscular power; at 
any rate those birds, whose chief means 
of locomotion is walking and who conse- 
quently do not need as strong wings and 
breasts as flying or swimming birds, have 
paler. breast and wing flesh. The differ- 
ence in color is apparently due to vari- 
ations in the quantity of hemoglobin (the 
principal red substance of blood) present 
in the flesh. Investigations carried on in 
France a number of years ago showed 
that the red color was a product of mus- 
cular activity. In other words when mus- 
cles work as actively as those of the breast 
of flying birds, hemoglobin is produced. 
Geese have been known as table birds at 
least since the days of Ancient Egypt. In 
all probability, chickens were domesticated 
in Burmah, in early times, from the jungle 
fowl, native in Southwestern Asia and 
Oceanica. No one knows when they were 
first tamed by man, but they were surely 
used in China in 800 B. C., if not earlier. 
The ancient Babylonian monuments men- 
tion them, and it was probably from Persia 
that they were introduced into Greece at 
the time of Alexander the Great. Since 
then they have spread all over the world 
in the track of European settlement. 
As regards the size of chickens for tabie 
birds, the live weight of standard bred 
cocks ranges from Io to 12 pounds, hens 
from 7 to 9.5, cockerels from 8 to I0 
pounds, pullets from 6 to 8 pounds and 
broilers about 2.5 pounds. A good table 
bird should have a large proportion cf 
flesh to the size of its bones, and a large, 
full breast, on which is found the delicate 
white meat. Long, thin legs and wings 
are undesirable, as they contain much bene 
and little meat. In England dark legged 
chickens are considered better than those 
which have legs and body of the same 
color, but in this country the preference is 
for the latter, though the reason for either 
choice is not clear. Light colored birds 
perhaps pluck cleaner than dark ones and 
are easier to make attractive for the mar- 
ket, which demands a skin free from vis- 
ible pin feathers. Almost any of the stan- 
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