24 THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [June r, 1881. 
ARTIFICIAL POULTRY RAISING. 
A prominent dealer in poultry, Mr. H. W. Knapp, 
of Washington Market, New York, gives a discourag- 
ing opinion of the probable success of chicken -raising 
by artificial means. He said recently when ques- 
tioned on the subject : — 
I went to France to study the matter, for if it 
can be made to succeed it will make an immense 
fortune, as it has already done in Paris. I was de- 
lighted at what I saw there, and the matter at first 
sight seemed to be so fascinating that I do not wonder 
that new men here are always ready to take hold 
of it. Even clergymen and actors are bitten with 
the desire to transform so many pounds of corn into 
•o many pounds of spring chicken. The now success- 
ful manager, Mackaye, spent about a thousand dollars 
in constructing hatching machines and artificial mo- 
thers in Connecticut, but he found that the stage 
taid better, and his expensive devices may now be 
onght for the value of old tin. Enthusiasts will 
tell you that by the new discovery chickens may be 
made out of corn with absolute certainty. In Paris 
this has been done ; but the conditions are entirely 
different here. There the land is valuable, and they 
cannot devote large fields to a few hundred chickens ; 
the French climate is so uniform that the markets 
of Paris cannot be supplied from the South with 
produce which ripens or matures before that of the 
neighbourhood of Paris ; the price of chickens is 
so high and labour so cheap that more care can be 
given with profit to one spring chicken than one of 
our poultry raisers could give to a dozen. Here we 
have plenty of land ; the climate south of us is so 
far advanced in warmth, that even with steam we 
cannot raise poultry ahead of the South, and the 
margin of profit is so small that one failure with a 
large batch of chickens sweeps away the profits from 
several successful experiments. When persons wanted 
me to go into the project I declined, and was called 
an 1 old fogey.' One man spent a fortune on the 
enterprise in "New Jersey, and at first was hailed as 
a public benefactor. What was the result of all his 
outlay and work ? He managed to hatch quantities 
of our chickens every February ; but although he 
could fatten them by placing them in boxes and forc- 
ing a fattening mixture down their throats, he could 
not make them grow ; tbey had no exercise ; they 
remained puny little things, and another defect soon 
appeared— though fat, they were tough and stringy. 
The breeder sent lots of them to me, and they looked 
fat and tender ; but my customers complained that 
they could not be young, for they were tough and 
tasteless, and that I must have sold them aged 
dwarfs under the name of spring chickens. It was 
found absolutely necessary to let them run out of 
doors as soon as the weather allowed it ; and by the 
time that they were ready for market, the southern 
chickens were here and could be sold for less than 
these. The upshot of the business is that this 
breeder has sold out, and another man has now 
taken hold of a small part of his old establish- 
ment to try other methods of making it a success. 
As to raising turkeys in that manner, it will fail more 
rlisastrously than the chicken business. Size and 
veight are wanted in turkeys ; and that reminds me, 
continued Mr. Knapp, that the newspapers ought to 
impress the country people with the necessity of 
improving their poultry stock ; breeding in-and-in is 
ruining poultry ; every year the stock we receive is 
deteriorating, and this is the cause. 1 could give 
you some striking examples from my experience of 
forty years in the business. Some years ago we 
poulterers thought that ducks were going to disappear 
from bills of fare altogether; they were tasteless, 
worthless birds, which people avoided. On Long Island 
a farmer made experiments in breeding with an old 
Muscovy drake, tough as an alligator, and the common 
duck. The result was superb, and has changed the 
whole duck industry. If the farmers of Northern 
New Jersey, the sandy country best suited to turkeys, 
would bring from the west a few hundred wild turkeys, 
we should have an immediate improvement. I see 
no such turkey now as we had twenty years ago. 
The breast is narrow and the body runs to length ; 
it is all neck and legs, and can be bought by the yard. 
Rhode Island sends us the best turkeys, but they are 
not what they used to be. If, instead of attempting 
to beat Nature at her own game, the rich men who 
have money to spend would devote it to better breed- 
ing, there would be an improvement. I do not yet 
despair of seeing immense farms wholly devoted to 
raising better poultry than we yet have.— Home and 
Colonial Mail. 
NEW AND OLD PRODUCTS: 
Ceylon Low-countky Report. 
Liberian Coffee ; Cacao. 
Western Province, 5th April 1881. 
My last, in which I took a tone of dread for the life 
of the Liberian coffee plants in the field, was written 
on the day on which rain fell, and it was just in time, 
for a few days more would have settled a large 
percentage of them ; as it is, a few have been scorched. 
21 days is the measure plants of this size can stand, 
even when carefully protected from the fierce sun. 
Since the rain came the plants haye been making 
rapid progress, but a fresh clecking of crickets have 
appeared. They have cut a few plants here and 
there, over the field, but they have settled most 
seriously to work on steep stony hillsides, of which 
there are several in the clearing, on which tbey have 
cut fully one-half within the last few days. The 
most of the plants so cut would grow again if not 
further interfered with, but they are always cut anew, 
when they develope a bud. 
Nearly all the seed from Theobroma is up, and 
that from L. & Co. has three-fourths up in five weeks ; 
that from O, S. & Co., that was sown a few days 
later, is just showing one here and there. I was 
much alarmed about the crickets in the sheds, when 
1 found one morning twenty cut seedlings, within 
a few feet, but for a week past they have of 
their own accord entirely desisted from tins work. 
When the plants began to suffer from the drought 
I set all hands to improve the shade. The rain came 
just as the work was finished, and I set all hands 
to undo what they had been doing, and this is the 
third time the same thing has happened since Christ- 
mas. After a fortnight of dry weather the sun scorches 
the leaves, wherever exposed ; after one heavy shower, 
the shade must be removed at once, else the leaves 
rot, and are riddled by minute insects, so that he who 
hopes to get up Liberian coffee in this climate needs to 
be ever on the alert. If, however, he once gets it up 
to 18 inches, his cares are over : in twelve months 
more he will have a tree six feet high with twelve 
pairs of branches, regularly graduated from two feet 
to two inches, and having several hundreds of fruits at 
various stages of development. As the best bunches 
of fruit are up to, and even Over, 30, and 140 has 
been counted on 8 joints of a two feet branch, I 
begin to think the assertion that a single mature 
tree has given 30 lb. not such an awful cram after all. 
The author who gave currency to this statement, 
nearly 40 years ago, did not condescend to say 
whether the 301b. was in cherry, parchment, or 
marketable coffee — he left a wide enough margin for 
choice, so that with 600 trees per acre, and the crop 
reduced to 3 lb. of cured coffee, we have still 16 cwt. per 
acre. If some of the trees under my care make 
good their present promise four years hencs, this 
