68 
Fam Poultry. 
seasons, at tlie end of which, time the capital of the foundei's is 
exhausted, and all the plant and what remains of the stock is 
distributed by the hammer of the auctioneer. 
Poultry farms have been tried in England under every 
variety of condition. Large portions of land have been devoted 
to their service, and have in some cases been gratuitously 
given for the purpose. In others extensive ranges of buildings 
have been erected according to various plans, but in every 
instance the result has been the same — disastrous pecuniary 
failure. Numerous accounts of suppwsititious poultry farms in 
France have appeared in English journals ; but they have had 
no existence except in imagination. Mr. Charles L. Suther- 
land, one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Royal Commis- 
sion on Agriculture, devoted special attention to the subject in 
1879 in the course of his investigation into the agricultural 
conditions of West Ceuti'al France, and he thus describes the 
result of his inquiries: — ^ 
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 been 
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 nil 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 bordier, 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 
rearing is a special industry, that gre -t sacrifices are made by the breeders 
to secure fresh ground on which to rear (heir chickens. 
There can be no doubt that poultry could be much more 
extensively and profitably reared by the small farmers and 
cottagers in our own country than is now the case, and far better 
table fowl could be produced. The great drawbacks to the 
profitable keeping of poultry are identical with those alluded to 
by Mr. Whitehead in his valuable Jlints on Vegetable and Fruit 
' Jtfi2>0Tts of the Jtoija.1 Cnmmimon on AgricvUure, Appendix to Tart I. p. 816 
(Pari. Paper, C. 2778, 11.). Quoted in Jotirnal, Vol. XIX. (Second Series),p. 190. 
