194 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
in winter as well as in summer is well known, and the simple reason appears 
to he that they do not get the supply of meat which they obtain in the warm 
season from worms and insects. M. de Sora was aware of these facts, and 
living at the time upon a dilapidated estate a few miles from Paris, the land 
having been bequeathed to him a few years previously, he set himself earnestly 
to the task of constructing a henery which should he productive twelve months 
in the year. He soon ascertained that a certain quantity of raw mincemeat, 
given regularly vath other food, produced the desired result ; and commencing 
v/ith only some 300 fowls, he found that they averaged the first year some twenty- 
five dozen eggs in the 3G5 clays. The past season he has wintered, thus far, 
about 100,000 hens, and a fair proportion of male birds, with a close approxi- 
mation to the same results. During the spring, summer, and autumn, they 
have the range of the estate, hut always under surveillance. In winter their 
apartments are kept at an agreeable temperature ; and although they have 
mincemeat rations the year round, yet the quantity is much increased during 
the cold v/eather. They have free access to pure water, gravel, and sand, and 
their combs are always red. To supply this great consumption of meat, M. de 
Sora has availed himself of the superannuated and damaged horses which can 
always he gathered from the stables of Paris and the suburbs. The horses are 
talcen to an abattoir owned by M. de Sora, and there neatly and scientifically 
slaughtered. The blood is saved clean and unmixed with offal. This is sold 
for the purposes of the arts, at a remunerative price. The skin goes to the 
tanner; the head, hoofs, shanks, &c., to the glue-maker and Prussian-blue manu- 
facturer ; the large bones make a cheap substitute for ivory with the button- 
maker; while the remainder of the osseous structure is manufactured into ivory 
black, or used in the shape of bone-dust for agricultural purposes. Even the 
marrow is preserved ; and much of the now fashionable and highly-perfumed 
lip-salve and j^omade was once enclosed in the leg-bones of old horses. Uses 
are also found for the entrails ; and, in fact, no portion of the beast is wasted. 
‘‘ The flesh is carefully dissected off the bones, and being cut into suitable pro- 
portions, it is run through a series of revolving knives, the apparatus being similar 
to a sausage machine of immense size, and is delivered in the shape of a homo- 
geneous mass of mincemeat, highly seasoned, into casks, which are immediately 
headed up, and conveyed per railroad to the egg-plantation of M. de Sora. 
“ The consumption of horses for this purpose by M. de Sora has been at the 
rate of twenty-two per day for the last twelvemonths, and so economical are all 
his arrangements, that he is enabled to make a profit on the cost of the animals 
by the sale of the extraneous substances enumerated above — thus furnishing to 
himself the mincemeat for much less than nothing delivered at his henery. It 
has been ascertained that a slight addition of salt and ground pepper to the mass 
is beneficial to the fowls ; yet M. de Sora does not depend upon these conditions 
alone to prevent putrefaction, hut has his store-rooms so contrived as to be kept 
at a temperature just removed from the freezing-point through the year, so that 
