Nature and Art, December 1, 1866.] 
OUE WINTER VISITORS. 
235 
number of divisions required, the cocks and pullets, 
and the lean and the fat lots, not being mixed up 
indiscriminately, because their rations differ, and 
the new comers would disturb the old settlers by 
their noise. The floor below the boxes is covered 
with ashes or dry earth, which is removed every 
two days with a scraper. 
The food is chiefly buckwheat meal, bolted quite 
fine. This is kneaded up with sweet milk till it 
acquires the consistency of baker’s dough ; it is then 
cut up into rations each about the size of two eggs, 
which are made up into rolls about the thickness of 
a woman’s finger, but varying with the sizes of the 
fowls ; these are subdivided by a sloping cut into 
“ patons,” or pellets, about two and a half inches 
long. A board is used for mixing the Hour with 
the milk, which in winter should be lukewarm. 
This is poured into a hole made in the heap of 
flour, and mixed up little by little with a wooden 
spoon as long as it is taken up ; the dough is then 
kneaded by the hands till it no longer adheres to 
them. Some say that oatmeal, or even barley-meal, 
is a good substitute for buckwheat-meal, but 
Mdlle. Millet Itobinet is not of that opinion. 
Indian corn-meal may do, but it makes a short 
crumbly paste, unless mixed with buckwheat-meal, 
when it answers well if cheap enough ; but buck- 
wheat is a hardy plant, which may be grown 
anywhere at small cost. 
In cramming, the attendant has the buckwheat 
pellets at hand with a bowl of clear water ; she 
takes the first fowl from its cage gently and care- 
fully, not by the wings or the legs, but with both 
hands under the breast ; she then seats herself with 
the fowl upon her knees, putting its tail under her 
left arm, by which she supports it ; the left hand 
then opens its mouth (a little practice makes this 
very easy), and the right hand takes up a pellet, 
dips it in the water, shakes it on its way to the open 
mouth, puts it straight down, and carefully crams 
it with the forefinger well into the gullet ; when it 
is so far settled down that the fowl cannot eject it, 
she presses it down with the thumb and forefinger 
into the crop, taking care not to fracture the pellet. 
Other pellets follow the first, till the feeding is 
finished, ‘in less time than one would imagine. It 
sometimes happens in cramming, that the trachea is 
pressed together with the gnllet ; this causes the fowl 
to cough, but it is not of any serious consequence, and 
with a little care is easily avoided. The fowl when 
fed is again held with both hands under its breast, 
and replaced in its cage without fluttering ; and so 
on with each fowl. The chickens have two meals 
in twenty-four hours, twelve hours apart, provided 
with the utmost punctuality: if they have to wait, 
they become uneasy ; if fed too soon, they suffer 
from indigestion, and in either case lose weight. 
On the first day of cramming only a few pellets are 
given ; the allowance being gradually increased till 
it reaches twelve to fifteen pellets. The crop may 
be filled, but before the next meal the last must 
have passed out of the crop which is easily ascer- 
tained by gentle handling. If there be any food in 
it, digestion has not gone on properly ; the fowl must 
then miss a meal, have a little water or milk given 
it, and a smaller allowance next time ; if too much 
food be forced upon the animal at first, it will get 
out of health and have to be set at liberty. 
The fattening process ought to be complete in two 
or three weeks, but for extra fat poultry twenty- 
five or twenty -six days are required ; with good 
management you may go on for thirty days ; after 
this the creature becomes choked with accumulated 
fat, wastes away, and dies. The fowls are killed 
instantaneously by piercing the brain. 
After plucking and trussing, the chicken is 
bandaged, until cold, to mould its form ; and if the 
weather is wai'm it is plunged for a short time into 
very cold water. A fowl takes usually rather more 
than a peck of buckwheat to fatten it. The fat of 
fowls so managed is of a dull white colour ; then- 
flesh is, as it were, seen through a transparent, 
delicate skin. 
It must not be imagined that the sixbject of 
Trench poultry and poultry-keeping is exhausted in 
the previous pages. There are in addition to the 
breeds that I have described, several other very 
good varieties, such as the Gueldres, the fowls of 
La Bresse, &c. ; but I have already reached the 
assigned limits of my article, and must refer those 
who required fuller information to the ninth and 
tenth numbers of the “ Poultry Book,” where 
they will find the subject of Trench poultry treated 
in extenso. 
OUR WINTER VISITORS. 
T HE periodical phenomenon connected with the 
migration of birds has long attracted the at- 
tention and aroused the curiosity of mankind. 
Poets and philosophers of every land and age have 
drawn endless similes and illustrations from these 
mysterious movements of the feathered tribes ; and 
we read in the oldest record of the human race, 
that “the stork knoweth her times.” Out of 361 
distinct species of birds (numbering all which have 
a claim to take a place in our British Avi-fauna) 
forty-eight species may be considered winter 
visitors. Not the least remarkable circumstance 
connected with these winter visitants is the un- 
erring punctuality with which they arrive on our 
coast ; year after year returning to their winter 
haunts in the same week, and often within a day 
or two of then accustomed time. This wonderful 
regularity to fixed times and seasons is most ap- 
parent on the Eastern coast of our island, for it is 
on these shores that the tired wings of the count- 
