190  Notes  on  Continental  Poultry -keeping. 
in  fact  as  much  care  should  be  taken  of  the  health  and  comfort 
of  poultry  as  of  human  beings. 
Mr.  Sutherland  gives  the  following  account  of  poultry- 
keeping in  France  in  his  Report  to  the  Royal  Commission 
on  Agriculture  : — 
“ The  chief  breeds  of  poultry  are  the  Houdan,  La  Fleche, 
La  Bresse,  and  Creve-cceur.  It  is  a commonly  received  idea  in 
England  that  there  exist  in  France  huge  poultry  farms,  where 
fowls  are  kept  by  several  hundreds,  and  it  has  been  over  and 
over  again  urged  on  English  farmers  to  adopt  this  poultry- 
farming on  a gigantic  scale  as  some  sort  of  means  of  alleviating 
the  present  depression,  and  enabling  them  to  make  money. 
A long  acquaintance  with  the  chief  French  poultry-breeding 
districts,  as  well  as  answers  to  inquiries  I have  from  time  to 
time  made  on  the  subject,  enable  me  positively  to  deny  the 
existence  of  such  establishments.  The  greatest  number  of 
heads  of  poultry  that  can  be  kept  profitably  on  a single  farm 
varies  from  200  to  300.  If  a greater  number  than  this  is  kept 
the  ground  becomes  poisoned,  and  it  is  found  impossible  to 
rear  chickens.  Whenever  large  poultry  farms  have  heen  started 
in  England,  as  for  instance  at  Bromley,  in  Kent,  they  have 
failed,  and  chiefly  owing  to  the  above  reason,  a reason  perfectly 
-well  known  to  and  understood  by  all  practical  poultry  keepers. 
The  manner  in  which  so  many  fowls  are  reared  and  eggs 
produced  in  France  is  as  follows,  independently,  of  course,  of 
climatic  influences,  which  must  be  held  to  be  of  some  little 
account : — Every  peasant  proprietor,  every  lordier,  with  perhaps 
two  or  three  acres  of  land,  keeps  fowls,  the  produce  from  which 
is  collected  by  dealers,  who  scour  the  country.  In  this  way  a 
very  large  number  of  fowls  in  the  aggregate  is  kept,  but  they 
are  scattered  about  all  over  the  country,  and  so  well  is  the 
necessity  for  change  of  ground  understood  in  the  districts 
where  poultry  raising  is  a special  industry,  that  great  sacrifices 
are  made  by  the  breeders  to  secure  fresh  ground  on  which  to 
rear  their  chickens. 
« At  Houdan,  in  the  Seine-et-Oise,  which  I visited  on  the 
2Gth  of  March,  1880,  the  poultry-breeding  industry  may  be  seen 
in  full  force.  Houdan  fowls  alone  are  kept,  and  it  is  calculated 
that  the  pullets,  when  well  fed,  will  commence  to  lay  at  five 
months  old.  Artificial  incubation  is  not  generally  practised, 
but  it  is  considered  that  it  will  come  into  use  as  soon  as  the 
means  for  hatching  a larger  proportion  of  the  eggs  can  be  dis- 
covered. At  present  it  is  found,  in  the  case  of  incubators,  that 
the  embrvo  is  very  apt  to  perish  on  the  18th  or  19th  day.  The 
majority  of  breeders  adopt  the  plan  of  placing  twenty-five  fowls’ 
eggs  under  a young  turkey  hen.  When  it  is  desired  that  the 
turkey  hen  shall  commence  to  sit,  be  it  January  or  June,  she  is 
