OF POULTRY. 
289 
native land by placing these outcast chickens within reach^ 
and thereby, not only increasing the prosperity of British 
farmers, but promoting national independence, and augment- 
ing the domestic resources of the country. 
This subject merits the most serious consideration of the 
landed gentry of England ; for, by furnishing facilities for 
their tenantry in obtaining such a valuable acquisition to 
their farm stock, they will not only assist them to clear 
their way in ungenial and less favourable seasons, but con- 
tribute much to that good feeling that should always exist 
between landlord and tenant, and thus ensure the happiness 
and domestic comforts of farmsteads in general. 
Before entering into my intended calculations, as to 
the profits arising from Spanish Dorkings, I shall take 
the opportunity of noticing an extraordinarily prolific hen, 
belonging to a gentleman in Somersetshire. In 1852 
she was seven years old; and in six years laid the fol- 
lowing number of eggs : — In the first year, 142 ; in the 
second, 200 ; in the third, 160 ; in the fourth, 144 ; in the 
fifth, 134 ; and in the sixth, 147 ; thus making, altogether, 
927 eggs from this single fowl. But this is perhaps an 
extraordinary case, and cannot be any certain criterion as 
a rule. 
Let us now consider which is the most profitable to 
farmers, keeping rats or Spanish Dorkings. 
In the first place, we shall set down a rat to eat and waste 
only a wine-glassful, or half a gill, of wheat in twenty-four 
hours ; and let us suppose that wheat is at the rate of sixty 
shillings per quarter. That would be a pint among eight, or 
a quart among sixteen rats per day ! Now that quart of 
wheat, at the rate of sixty shillings per quarter, would cost 
over twopence threefarthings. 
In the second place, let us remember, that you do 
not feed your fowls with corn at sixty shillings per quar- 
ter, but with the refuse from thrashing. However, let us 
suppose you feed them with good sound barley at forty 
shillings per quarter; then, for twopence three farthings 
you could give sixteen fowls about three pints of good barley 
per day. Now if sixteen fowls had daily three pints of 
good barley, besides what they would pick up about the 
farm, do you not think they would do well ? In a word, do 
u 
