AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
January, 1914 
ii 
color and purely ornamental, the only goose 
the feathers of which are at all brilliant. 
Though handsome and apparently well 
fitted to adorn a private aviary, they are 
not in favor because of their belligerent 
tendencies. They are sure to make war on 
any other birds with which they may be con- 
fined and have been known to cause a heavy 
loss by killing several other ornamental 
specimens outright. 
Although very odd and interesting, and 
having a place in the American Standard of 
Perfection, Sebastopol geese are rare in this 
country. The oddity of their appearance 
lies in the fact that their pure, white 
feathers are long and silky, streaming to 
the ground. Feathers fifteen inches long 
are sometimes seen. These birds are not 
accounted particularly hard to raise and of 
course are highly ornamental. 
All geese of the practical purpose breeds 
are exceedingly hardy and very easy to 
raise. It is not necessary to have a tight 
house with various furnishings as when 
keeping hens. A rough shed will suffice 
for shelter. Much of the time will be spent 
in the open, anyway. A goose will tuck her 
feet under her heavy quilt of feathers and 
settle down comfortably in a blizzard, mov- 
ing only often enough to keep from being 
buried under a snow bank. It is advisable, 
however, to give the birds some sort of 
shelter in Winter, to offer protection when 
high winds blow. 
Pjeing grazing creatures, geese thrive on 
pasture, and when they have a wide stretch 
of grass land to roam over, they will need 
almost no grain. When confined, it is im- 
perative that they be given grass or other 
green food in abundance. Wheat, oats and 
corn may he given as a grain ration when 
needed. Goslings will eat grass from the 
first day, but for the first few 'months need 
a little crumbly mash or scalded cracked 
corn three times a day. 
It is commonly supposed that geese must 
have water in which to swim, but this is not 
a fact. Thousands of geese are raised and 
marketed without ever using their webbed 
feet in a pond or stream. A cask sunk into 
the ground will make a satisfactory sub- 
stitute for a swimming hole, but often 
water is given only in a bucket, which is 
set between four stakes driven firmly into 
the ground to prevent its being tipped over 
by the heavy birds. 
There is no need of renewing the flock 
every year as with hens. Breeding geese 
may be kept for many years, so that all the 
goslings raised may be disposed of before 
cold weather comes, unless the grower de- 
sires to keep a number of them along to 
serve on the table in the course of the 
Winter. Geese live to be very old, but the 
ganders have a tendency to become cross 
after they reach the age of six or seven 
vears and usually are not kept much longer 
than ten years at any rate. Sometimes they 
become so bellicose that they will attack 
women and children and they are able to 
cause a serious injury with their powerful 
wings. The females are commonly kept 
somewhat longer than the ganders. 
Geese are polygamists but in a limited 
way. It is customery to mate a gander with 
two or three geese. When once made, mat- 
ings often last for many years, the ganders 
paying no attention to other geese. It is 
not advisable to mate geese under three 
years of age. for which reason the man or 
woman who desires to make an immediate 
start in the breeding of geese should pur- 
chase mated mature birds. It is always well 
to have geese mated and in their permanent 
ciuarters as early as possible in the year, as 
they need some time to get acquainted with 
their surroundings 
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THE CRAFTSMAN 
Poultry 
attk Uni? ^tork 
Str?rtorij 
G. D. TILLEY 
Naturalist 
Beautiful Swans, Fancy 
Pheasants, Peafowl, Cranes, 
Storks, Ornamental Ducks and 
Geese, Flamingoes, Game and 
Cage Birds. 
“Everything in the bird line from a 
Canary to an Ostrich’’ 
1 am the oldest established and largest exclusive 
dealer in land and water birds in America and have 
on hand the most extensive Stock in the United Stales. 
G. D. TILLEY Box A, Darien, Conn. 
Geese lay from a dozen to fifty eggs a 
season, depending upon breed and strain. 
The Toulouse has the reputation of being a 
better egg producer than the Emden. Ex- 
cept the Toulouse, the common geese are 
satisfactory mothers, but it is customary to 
set the first eggs laid under liens in order to 
induce the geese to lay a larger number. 
The geese like barrels or old boxes placed 
in out of the way spots for their nests and 
thirty days are required for incubating the 
eggs. The goslings must have water to 
drink from the first day. but should not be 
allowed to swim until the feathers come. In 
fact, it is well to get them under cover when 
rain falls for the first few weeks, while they 
are covered only with down. 
CHINESE WOMEN 
C HINESE ladies, says Edith Blake in 
The Nineteenth Century, do not care 
for exercise, and rarely leave the house 
except in a closed sedan chair. They 
occupy themselves somewhat similarly 
to European ladies in other respects. 
They pay and receive visits, see after their 
households, choose jewels and toilettes, 
play cards, dominoes, or chess, smoke 
water-pipes, and sometimes a whiff of 
opium, make the pretty little miniature 
gardens, of which several are usually 
seen in Chinese houses, occupy them- 
selves in various kinds of work, in paint- 
ing, and so on. The life is varied by the 
recurrence of festivals, and a wealthy 
woman sometimes passes several months 
in pilgrimages. As a general rule the 
ladies are Buddhists, but their Confucian 
husbands escort them on these expedi- 
tions, in which they are accompanied by 
a numerous retinue of servants. The 
huge Buddhist monasteries are pictur- 
esquely perched on some high mountain, 
surrounded by forests and crags, with 
streams trickling here and there over the 
rocks, and every now and then is seen a 
little shrine on some large stone, and in 
the shrine the figure of a smiling “Goddess 
of Mercy” holding an infant in her arms, 
or a solemn stone Buddha, before whom 
a few incense-sticks give out their lives 
in sweet perfume. When a great lady 
arrives at one of these sylvan retreats a 
suite of apartments in one of the numer- 
ous courts of guest chamber is assigned 
to her, and her attendants spread out the 
gorgeous hangings and rich silks belong- 
ing to their mistress, and deck the bare 
rooms, provided by the kind monks, with 
mirrors and brilliant scrolls, so that the 
simple chambers become a fitting set- 
ting for the dainty occupants, who will 
there spend several days passed in wor- 
shipping at the various shrines, in attend- 
ing services chanted by the monks, ex- 
pending large sums in charity, and in 
providing feasts of fruit and rice, cakes 
and vegetables for the poor. The 
Chinese are large-hearted in their chari- 
ties, and the women are not behind the 
men in this respect. An awful famine de- 
vasted the Empire between 1877-79, in 
which two years no less than some ten 
or eleven millions of people are said to 
have died. Some time afterwards an 
English lady traveling in that region fre- 
quently met poor widows, who would re- 
late how their lives had been saved by 
the wife of a small official who, during 
that fearful visitation, had daily provided 
them with a good meal. When the Eng- 
lish traveler congratulated this Chinese 
lady on her kindness, the latter answered, 
“How could I enjoy my own meals if 
these poor neighbors were starving?” 
