490 = 224 Practical Agriculture. 
Comparative Pkices of Wool in 1872, per Tod of 28^ lbs. 
Highest. 
Lowest. 
Average. 
S. d. 
65 0 
60 0 
26 6 
25 6 
s. 
63 
58 
26 
25 
s. d. 
64 0 
59 0 
26 3 
25 3 
Stafford, "Warwick, and Midland 
Counties pabture-wool generally — 
Hogg 
We'ther 
63 0 
59 0 
60 
57 
61 6 
58 0 
Half-breds, Norfolk, &c. — 
Ho-'e 
•■ 
59 0 
55 0 
Downs — • 
Wether 
55 0 
49 0 
Poultnj. — It would be futile to attempt any estimate of the 
total production of eggs, of poultry for the table, and of feathers ; 
though M. Leonce de Lavergne, in his ' Rural Economy of 
England,' ventured to state the annual produce of our birds (not 
including game) at 800,000/. ; and Dr. Wynter, in his 'Curiosities 
of Civilisation,' enumerated 2,000,000 fowls, 350,000 ducks, 
104,000 turkeys and 100,000 geese, as sold yearly in the London 
markets. It is true, however, that poultry-keeping and even 
bird-farming have very greatly extended of late years ; that 
attention to this branch of the farmer's business has substituted 
good management for neglect throughout most parts of the 
kingdom ; and that, as a result of the still increasing taste for 
breeding and exhibiting the most perfect and highly developed 
specimens of native and imported varieties, valuable and profit- 
able birds of pure breed, or crosses from properly match'hd breeds, 
have largely taken the place of inferior poultry which possessed 
no merit either as egg-layers, mothers, or table-birds. The 
demands of great cities for dainty diet have encouraged im- 
provements in poultry production, till Surrey and Sussex no 
longer enjoy a monopoly of high prices for early chickens; 
Buckinghamshire, which annually raises hundreds of thousands 
of its milk-white Aylesbury ducks, is imitated by other counties 
able to supply the large centres of population in the North ; 
Christmas turkeys and geese are grazed in flocks and fattened 
for the market in other parts of England besides the eastern 
counties ; Dorking fowls, or crosses between Dorking and 
Brahma, or between Dorking and Cochin, are sent to market from 
