290 
GENERAL MANAGEMENT 
your fowls get half that ? If they do, they get more food 
than farm fowls in general. 
In the third place, 125 rats, allowing only three glasses 
for waste, eat a peck of corn per day, and thereby cost you 
at the rate of £34 45. 4c^d. per year. Bear in mind also, 
that they yield you nothing in return, except a host of 
their young to keep. So we find that, by keeping 125 rats, your 
£34 45. 4|J. is infinitely worse than if thrown behind the 
fire, because in that case you would know the end of the 
loss ; but as it is, you can form no idea whatever as to the 
end of the losses by rats, except by their extirpation. 
Now let us suppose you have destroyed all the rats, and 
have 125 Spanish Dorkings in their place ; then let us see 
what the difference would be. In the first place, let us set them 
down to lay only 120 eggs each in the year. That will be at the 
rate of four eggs per week, for seven calendar months : thereby 
leaving five calendar months, or twenty-two weeks for sitting, 
moulting, and so on. Now this is fourteen eggs less than the 
hen above mentioned laid in her worst year, and eighty eggs 
less than her best year. However, to keep the matter 
within the mark, let us set them down to lay 120 eggs each 
in the year. In the second place, whait shall we sell 
these Spanish Dorking eggs at ? Here I must tell you 
that a French-egg merchant of London, after weighing 
Aunt Jane's eggs against his own, bought a number 
to sit under his fowls, to raise eggs for his own eating. 
This was in the middle of May, and he was then selling his 
largest foreign eggs at twelve a shilling ; but if you picked 
them, he would not let you have more than ten for the 
shilling. He sold them at all prices, according to the size ; 
and as to the small stale ones, you could have them from 
twenty to twenty-four for the shilling ; but they were only 
the size of bantams' eggs ; nor would he change them if 
rotten. 
French and English Eggs. 
Here, I must ask you this simple question — If steam 
can bring foreign eggs and poultry from abroad to London, 
and then from London convey them by railroad to nearly 
every town in the provinces, pray cannot steam convey 
British eggs and poultry from all parts of the country to 
