Russian Poultry. 



249 



persons, societies, clubs and organisations, Russian and 

 foreign, engaged in the breeding or otherwise interested in 

 birds will be admitted as exhibitors. No customs duty will 

 be levied on exhibits which are re-exported within tv/o 

 months after the closing of the exhibition, and goods for 

 the exhibition will be conveyed on Russian railways at 

 special rates. Application for printed forms of entry and 

 for further particulars should be addressed to the Committee 

 of Organisation of the International Poultry Exhibition, 

 P'ontanka 10, Imperial Agricultural Museum, St. Petersburg. 

 Forms of entry must be sent in by the 13th March, 1899. 



The chief districts whence Russian poultry is sent to the 

 London market is situated around the 

 ^Qulirji station " Czorkowo," where all owners ot 



land, both large and small, besides 

 peasants, keep poultry in enormous quantities. The birds 

 are fed up and killed at the beginning of the winter, when 

 the frosts begin, and are sent frozen in casks and boxes, in 

 part to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in part to Libau for 

 shipment to London. 



Poultry farming is found so profitable that a good many 

 peasants have lately given up their ordinary occupations to 

 devote themselves entirely to it. This trade is open to great 

 improvement ; but great difficulty lies in the ignorance of the 

 peasantry. The methods of packing have lately been much 

 improved. All sizes of birds were formerly packed together; 

 but now they are graded into three qualities, and packed in 

 paper in cases containing from seventy to a hundred hea.d. 



Russian fowls are considered on the London market to be 

 of inferior quality, being of bad flavour, very dry, and of 

 small size. Her Majesty's Consul-General at Warsaw has 

 been informed that the want of flavour arises greatly from 

 the careless way in which they are unfrozen in London ; but 

 he is of opinion that the principal causes of the inferiority of 

 the Russian fowls are due to the small breed which is reared, 

 and above all to the want of proper feeding, especially 



