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CHAPTER XXXIX. 
TABLE POULTRY. 
The years which have passed since the first edition of this work was .published, have seen an 
immense development of what is called the “ Poultry fancy The number of shows has 
multiplied ten-fold, and the number of pens exhibited at the two chief exhibitions of the year has 
at least quadrupled ; and with this vast increase in the amount and severity of competition, 
rules of feather and form have tended to become even more rigid than they formerly were. But 
what the effect of this keen competition has been upon Poultry considered merely as food is, of 
course, a different question. 
Broadly speaking, however, even here also the result has been good ; and of late there has 
been a most marked amount of attention devoted at shows to Table Poultry, pure and simple, 
which must in the end lead to still further improvement. We are aware that this opinion differs 
widely from one often avowed ; but those who point to higher prices, and the great difficulty 
of getting a fine fowl, forget the general rise in prices of everything, and the enormous increase in 
the demand for fowls. The best quality of poultry is, however, lower in price than it has been for 
years. This is possibly due to the very great improvement in Irish poultry, which has lowered 
the value of Surrey and other English-bred fowls. We have also satisfied ourselves, upon ample 
grounds, that the number of really fine table fowls now supplied in England would have been 
simply unapproachable years ago, and that the stock upon average farms is of very much better 
type than it was then, except in the special districts of Lincolnshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, 
which for generations have reared fine birds. The fowls there are no better, for the simple 
reason that they hardly could be ; but almost everywhere else they certainly are. Thus, a later 
examination of the matter has given us no cause to modify the general conclusions expressed 
in Chapter VI. It is inevitable, as there pointed out, that fancy breeding must often issue in a 
lessening of laying properties, and even of hardihood; but the injury thus done is always recover- 
able when stock is needed for useful purposes, and is far outweighed by the benefits conferred. 
The truth of this is well shown by the Dorking fowl. There is just one variety of this — 
the Cuckoo — which never has been taken up by fanciers ; and the result is that, though there is 
no reason why it should not be as fine a fowl as other colours, it remains both scarce, and fai 
inferior in size and every useful point to other varieties. 
During recent years, however, prizes have been more and more offered for eggs and for table 
fowls purely as such ; and this movement, which itself grew out of the poultry fancy and its shows, 
there is reason to hope may further improve the general quality of market fowls especially, by 
teaching farmers and country growers the practical effect of various crosses. Prizes are offered at 
some shows for dead fowls ; at others for live birds singly or in pairs ; at others for live birds, of 
which the most promising are to be killed, and judgment finally pronounced upon their merits 
dead. In one shape or the other, the general adoption of such classes, with adequate prizes, is 
much to be desired, and either will do great good. It is respecting such classes, and the kind of 
