302 
Farminrj of Buckinghamshire. 
season. The ducklings are taken from their fostei'-mother the 
moment they leave the shell, and the poor hen continues her period 
of incubation till she can endure it no longer, and then leaves the 
nest a perfect skeleton, without the satisfaction of rearing a brood. 
Tlie ducklings are kept in lots, warmly lioused, and allowed but a 
limited access to water. Tliey are fed, in addition to corn, with 
greaves, liver, flesh, and almost every description of animal gar- 
bage. In eight or ten weeks the ducks are killed and forwarded 
to London, where, in the early season, prices sometimes range as 
high as 14s. per couple. Of the numbers thus produced it is 
impossible to speak with certainty ; but to illustrate the quantity, 
it may be stated that a little farmer at Bierton had at one time, 
last season, nearly 2000. From evidence given before the Ayles- 
bury Railway Committee, it appeared that the enormous number 
of 800,000 were annually reared in the county ; but this perhaps 
is the language of an ardent witness, and half that quantity would 
be nearer the truth. Nothing worthy of notice appears in the 
other fowls. The Cochin Chinas having originated and flourished 
through the poultry mania, are now properly valued as excellent 
layers, and are used as cross-breeds to improve the size, but not 
the elegance, of the common barn-door fowl. 
The cart-horses of the county are heavy, dull animals, with 
long manes and tails and very hairy legs. The pace at which 
four or five of these great creatures crawl along in a plough would 
not say much for their agility and power, for they hardly ever 
plough an acre a day, and each horse has seldom more than G or 
7 cwt. to draw. The clay-lands of the county require a great 
amount of strength to work them, and if a good supply of horse- 
flesh is not at hand, when the season arrives, the only oppor- 
tunity of properly working such land may be gone. It is, tliere- 
fore, admitted that more horses than are absolutely necessary are 
frequently used in a plough during the winter, but why are not 
such horses yoked abreast in pairs to do the light summer's 
ploughing ? But no ; be the weather ever so fine, and the ground 
ever so well pulverized, in certain districts, never less than three 
horses, and those in a line, are seen at plough. Let no one rashly 
assert that all land can at all times be ploughed with two horses. 
Some of the clays of this county would convince the most scep- 
tical, and the trampling of the land horse in wet weather is 
always injurious. Yet the constant kneading of the waxy subsoil, 
from four or five great horses always walking in the furrow, must 
tend to make it impervious to water, and this is hardly ever 
counteracted by the use of the subsoil-plough. Cart-horses are 
seldom baited in the middle of the day, but work from 7 till 2 
or 3 o'clock. The winter provender is chiefly oats, beans, hay, 
and corn-chaff, and the stable management is generally pretty 
