AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
FOP. THE 
Farm, GLai-cleri, and Honseliold. 
“AOIUCULTUUE IS T11E MOST HEALTHFUL, HOST USEFUL. AN1» MOST NOISLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.”— Washington. 
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in November, 1S75, by the Okange Judd Company, at tiie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
VOLUME XXXIV— No. 12. NEW YORK, DECEMBER, 1875. NEW SERIES— No. 347. 
5 
pjj TmfiiTni 
CAY : 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
One who visits the market of a large city, es¬ 
pecially near the holidays, is struck with the im¬ 
mense stock of poultry; chickens, turkeys, geese, 
and ducks, are presented in such profusion, that 
he wonders how such a multitude could be brought 
together. If the same person happens to he in the 
fall of the year in the country, anywhere from 
Maine to Michigan—or further west, he will often 
see, not only on the main roads, hut on the by¬ 
ways, leading to remote farm-houses, the coop-like 
wagons of the poultry buyer, passing from farm to 
farm, the sources of supply, and gathering up the 
units which make up the millions of poultry an¬ 
nually required by the large cities. Certain kinds 
of business develope peculiar characters; the tin- 
peddler is very much the same, wherever he may be, 
and the poultry buyers, as a class, have the same 
general characteristics. The poultry collector 
lives by buying and selling, hence he is shrewd; 
but his buying is mostly from the women of the 
farm, the fowls being generally their perquisites, 
hence he is polite, and has a good knowledge of 
what Sam Slick said were essential to a clock ped¬ 
dler, “soft sawder and human natur’.” The poul¬ 
try buyer is an important person in a thinly settled 
farming district, for he comes to buy, and not like 
the majority of traveling tradesmen, to sell, and 
more than all he does not trade or “ dicker,” but 
buys for cash. Many a good woman depends upon 
the sale of the fowls she has brought up from the 
nest, for her scanty supply of ready money, and 
the traveling buyer affords her the only means of 
disposing of them, hence his coming, especially in 
sparcely settled districts, is an event of no little 
importance. In the older states the buyer general¬ 
ly manages in more style than elsewhere ; he drives 
on in advance, and makes his purchases, letting his 
assistants come along later, to pick up and cany 
off the fowls he has bought; but where farms 
are few and far between, the buyer drives his own 
wagon, and picks up fowls, turkeys, geese, or 
ducks, as he may happen to come across them. 
