How to Select Table Poultry. 
577 
most often fails heie. The bieast is deep, and often long ; but it is apt to be narrow. Hence the 
need of caiefully choosing biids selected as a cross j or the need of a cross to correct the fault. 
3. The bieast must be long. On this depends the length of the slices cut from it. Here 
Cochins aie very apt to fail , veiy few Langshans we have seen had this fault ; it has been lately 
more and more common in Cochin-bred Brahmas. Some turkeys are particularly bad in this 
respect , a fact showing that careful selection has the matter in perfect control. 
Stock of the vaiieties chosen always can be found, except perhaps amongst Cochins, sufficiently 
free fiom the faults here pointed out ; and by thus using judgment, a good table model can be 
secured. The ideal model is seen in the breast of a well-reared pheasant ; and next to that, 
perhaps, in that of a fine Dorking or old-fashioned Game fowl. 
Having bred the stock, nothing need be added on details of feeding to the contents of 
previous chapters, except, perhaps, to remark that at the prices since 1882, wheat has become 
one of the cheapest of foods, and when given with judgment, and always as whole meal when 
ground, is found to be one of the very best for putting on flesh. But it should be added 
that what may be called even feeding throughout is of the greatest importance, as the want 
of it is the cause of a most common defect. If an ordinary English fowl badly fed is examined, 
there will be found to be hardly any meat on the back ; indeed, many people have an idea there 
never is any meat there ! Now the effect of even several weeks’ good feeding upon a thin 
chicken is to deposit either flesh or fat in places , but not to produce even clothing with 
meat all over , which is the perfection of chicken-rearing. Moreover, fat so deposited is 
gross and disagreeable, whereas even feeding deposits it rather infiltrated amongst the muscle, 
giving tenderness and juiciness to the whole, as is seen on a larger scale in well-marbled beef. 
So well understood is this in France, that it is usual, as Mr. T. Christy has again and again 
pointed out, to expose the poultry there with the backs uppermost, the exact contrary of English 
practice, though the representations of this gentleman have lately caused some imitation of French 
practice at the better West-End shops. If the back is well and evenly covered with flesh, the breast 
must carry as much meat as the build of the fowl admits of; but the converse is by no means the 
case. Whether or not better knowledge shall lead to a general reform in the matter of shop 
display, this method of judging cannot be too widely known by purchasers ; and the laisei should 
never be satisfied till he can produce chickens with the back nicely covered to a smooth surface. 
This is to be done by an ample supply of good food constantly changed, including wheat and 
boiled rice (the latter tends to make white flesh); and the French prefer to “ finish off” with 
buckwheat and milk. 
The fowl having been properly bred, properly fed, and killed, the next question is that of 
dressing for market ; and here again English custom stands much in need of improvement, and is 
against the true interest both of producer and consumer, since it tends to make poor fowls look as 
nearly as possible like good ones. It is usual to smash down the keel of the breast-bone with a 
round roller or handle of the knife, making the breast look broad and plump, which is then exposed 
upwards to tempt the purchaser. It will be obvious, however, that this process cannot mace 
meat ; and the splinters effectually prevent the carver from getting a nice even slice, even bom a 
good fowl. So inveterate is this custom among poulterers, that even a good raise, may n . 
impolitic to run counter to it all at once-it is never wise to be too rash in any reform, bu ct e.y 
purchaser of a fowl should, for his or her own sake, insist on an unbroken breast and . even 
the clubs and gentry of London were to refuse any poultry that has been mutilated, ic om i 
gradually spread. It is here especially that the exhibition in classes of dead fowls may do great 
good; for it all such classes broken-down breasts are •‘disqualified," and thus the eyes of the 
2 X 
