CHAPTER XIV. 
BUYING, SELLING, AND EXPORTING. 
No amateur can get on without occasionally buying other stock ; and every fancier has generally 
some surplus which he wants to sell ; hence a very few words on these subjects may not be 
out of place. 
Our own experience is, that it is easier to sell first-class birds at very high prices than stock of 
a more moderate quality. It is within our personal knowledge that one poultry-man, at the close of 
18S5, had sold four birds for the aggregate sum of ,£195 ! — hence we need hardly stop to prove that 
there is solid remunerative return for the judicious breeder ; and we need only add that the very 
best birds cannot be obtained at small sums. We make this remark because we have repeatedly 
received letters asking the prices of stock, describing what is wanted in words that exhaust all the 
perfections of any “ Standard of Excellence/’ only to find the remark at the end that it is useless 
to ask more than a moderate price, as such will not be paid ! To write in such terms is simply the 
presumption of ignorance ; and we speak the literal truth when we say that eminent breeders are in 
the constant habit of refusing such sums as £20 for their best cocks or pairs of hens, if they think 
they cannot spare them without injury to their own breeding prospects. To expect to get perfect 
birds for such sums as many people seem to imagine is ridiculous ; indeed, a quite perfect bird is 
perhaps never seen. Yet fanciers every now and then receive such letters as the following, which 
came to us personally, and which we preserved as a curious specimen of the class to which it 
belongs. The Italics are those of the writer: — 
“ Dear Sir, — Kindly let me know the lowest price you can send me a pen of Dark Brahmas to win the cup ai 
Dublin. They must be perfect in all points, and price must not be very high. “Yours truly, 
“ L. Wright, Esq. * * * 
“ P S. — They must be certam winners or of no use.” 
A breeder will always buy for some specific end ; and we have ere now been glad to give £5 
for a heavily-hocked cock, and double that sum for a bird likely to prove valuable as stock, though 
not fit to show in good company. The best plan when the judgment can be trusted — and we have 
already advised that no one should buy to any extent before — is either to visit some first-class yard, 
and there pick out and ask the price of the bird wanted, or to examine the class at some large 
show where birds are extensively entered for sale. At such a show as Birmingham a good judge 
can almost always select a sound, valuable bird, at a very moderate price — such as meets his 
particular want, whatever it may be — but not a certain winner at the next show he sends him to, 
unless he will pay a corresoonding figure. The same can be done from a good yard ; but in the 
latter case no price can guarantee a purchaser’s getting the very best bird of the year, for the 
simple reason that, however good a vendor may know his bird to be, it cannot be known till after 
competition whether some one else may not have one a little better. We knew a curious case one 
year, in which a certain breeder sent a Buff Cochin cockerel to an early show, so clearly ahead of 
