302 
Some Minor Rural Industries. 
meal, bran, middlings, and linseed meal at 4-1. per ton, green 
clover at 8s. per ton, and meat scraps at 1 \d. per pound, it cost 
approximately 2f d. for each pound of gain made by growing 
chickens. At 101,- weeks old these chickens averaged 2 -4 pounds 
in weight. 
At the same station, when home-made incubators and brooders 
were used for chickens and ducks, white Plymouth Pock chicks 
at 12 weeks old averaged 1'7 pound apiece, whilst Pekin ducks, 
also reared in a brooder, at the same age weighed nearly 4 
pounds. 
Conclusion. 
A point of cardinal importance, upon which in the preceding 
pages insistence has been laid in the case both of duck-rearing 
and of fowl-rearing, is the maintenance of a vigorous young 
male bird where breeding is the object in view. If this be not 
attended to the number of infertile eggs is likely to cause annoy- 
ance and loss. Another point is the commercial advantage 
arising from securing the early market, at a time when prices 
are at their best. A well-sustained effort in this direction brings 
a substantial reward, for it is the means of raising very consider- 
ably the amount of the season’s earnings. There is nothing new 
in this point, for more than 170 years ago Defoe recognised the 
commercial value of “ live chickens in the dear seasons.” His 
remarks, 1 at the end of which these words occur, are, however, 
of so much interest that they will bear quoting : — 
I cannot omit, however little it may seem, that this county of Suffolk is 
particularly famous for furnishing; the City of London and all the counties 
round with turkeys, and that it is thought there are more turkeys bred in 
this county and the part of Norfolk that adjoins to it than in all the rest of 
England, especially for sale, though this may be reckoned, as I say above, 
but a trilling thing to take notice of in these remarks ; yet, as I have hinted, 
I shall observe how London is in general supplied with all its pro- 
visions from the whole body of the nation, and how every part of the island 
is engaged in some degree or other of that supply. On this account I could 
not omit it, nor will it be found so inconsiderable an article as some may 
imagine, if this be true, which I received an account of from a person living 
on the place, viz., that they have counted three hundred droves of turkeys 
(for they drive them all in droves on foot) pass in one season over Stratford 
Bridge on the River Stour, which parts Suffolk from Essex, about six miles 
from Colchester, on the road from Ipswich to London. These droves, as 
they say, generally contain from three hundred to a thousand each drove ; 
so that one may suppose them to contain five hundred one with another, 
which is one hundred and fifty thousand in all ; and yet this is one of the 
least passages, the numbers which travel by Newmarket Ileath and the open 
country and the forest, and also the numbers that come by Sudbury and 
Clare being many more. 
Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722. By Daniel Defoe. 
