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BREEDING FARM STOCK. 
This principle of breeding and improving breeds, as well 
retaining varieties, have been carried out with success in 
many instances. At the present time there is a great rage 
for improving our domestic poultry ; by judicious selections 
any variety may be retained by exclusion of other varieties ; 
but this must be done by excluding the offspring from the 
parents, by a management of shifting and changing, retain- 
ing desired qualities. The varied forms of domestic poultry 
are but varieties of the same breed, by exclusion of others. 
Thus we have the Cochin China fowl, very distinct to the 
five-clawed feather-legged Bantam. Mr. Lawrance has re- 
marked on the very varied forms in different countries that 
there is the rumpless fowl (gallus ecandatus ), of Virginia, 
which has undoubtedly descended from the English breed. 
In different situations the fowl runs into every conceivable 
variety. Some are large, some small, some tall, others 
dwarfish ; and in the same way the comb varies, as well 
as the tufts of feathers on the head. Some fowls have no 
tails, others very fine ones; the legs may be yellow and 
naked, and others covered with feathers. There is a breed 
with the feathers reversed in their direction all over the 
body ; and another, in India, with white downy feathers and 
black skin ; and all these show endless diversities of colour, 
each country and period having a fashion or predilection for 
colour or form. These varieties are but the effects of se- 
lections and exclusions, preventing those from breeding 
which are not desirable, in the same way that a breeder of 
sheep obtains a name for a particular variety. 
The fine distinction of nervous defects are best shown in 
peculiarities of the human species. To describe which and 
what I can remember on this subject, I must go back to my 
school-boy days; but, before I leave the subject of fowl 
breeding, I may mention the result of an exclusive rearing of 
a white breed of fowls, by a party at Farrington, in Hamp- 
shire, in an endeavour to procure the pure white; the blood 
relationship was retained for many years, until a diminutive 
race was produced, with excrescences on various parts of the 
head and body ; a great want of nervous energy and back- 
wardness of growth was the result. When this race was 
crossed with others, and with the large China breed, the 
improvement was very conspicuous, for the chickens of 
the same age became double the size of the original white 
breed, and were very soon made ready for the market. Thus, 
may an attention to poultry rearing be made a profitable 
employ for the farmer’s family, many of whom have, of late 
years, considered domestic poultry as beneath their notice. 
