1874] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
419 
last year laid respectively 125 and 131 eggs. 
They have done much better the present sea- 
•son. One of the old birds commenced laying 
on the 27th of February, and laid 178 eggs in 
182 days, missing hut four days. The other 
did nearly as well. This is three or four times 
as many eggs as we ordinarily get from Kouens 
or Aylesburys. What is more remarkable, one 
of the young ducks, hatched in April, began to 
lay in August, and had laid seven eggs by the 
1st of September. Such early laying is all 
that we expect of the best varieties of gallin¬ 
aceous fowls. The Pekins as much excel in 
fecundity all other varieties of ducks with 
which we are acquainted, as they do in size. 
They have had the advantage of thorough 
breeding for centuries for their flesh and eggs, 
and we predict for them in this country the 
front rank among our useful aquatic fowls. 
A Rat-Proof Fence. 
Granaries, corn cribs, or poultry houses, may 
be made rat-proof, by means of a wire fence 
which we here illustrate, and for which we are 
indebted to the Journal cV Agriculture Pratique , 
of Paris. This fence has been introduced with 
perfect success, into the 
Garden of Acclimatation 
in Paris, for the purpose 
of preventing the depre¬ 
dations of rats. No rat 
can surmount this fence. 
It is made of thin wire 
bars placed an inch apart, 
and affixed to heavier 
cross bars; the ends of 
the bars being curved out¬ 
wards, as shown in figure 
1. When the building 
to be protected is placed 
upon the ground, and it 
is desired to prevent rats 
from undermining it, two 
rows of bricks or tiles are 
placed beneath the fence, one in an upright posi¬ 
tion, and sunk a few inches beneath the surface, 
and the other horizontally and projecting out¬ 
wards, forming a bench. When the rats dig 
down to burrow beneath the building, they fol¬ 
low the first tile until they meet the second. Be¬ 
ing stopped here, they burrow along the angle 
formed by the two tiles until they are tired, 
without being able to penetrate beneath the 
building. If they attempt to climb the wires, 
they get into the gallery formed by the upper 
■curve, but can go no- further. The fence of 
course is made of such a hight that a rat can 
not leap over it. In the Garden of Acclimata¬ 
tion, the fence is abor'; two feet in hight, and 
is found perfectly effective. Figure 2 shows a 
piece of the fence complete. This contrivance 
is also used to entrap rats, which it does in 
large numbers. A small park or enclosure is 
surrounded with this fence, protected at the 
bottom with tiles as already explained. An 
opening is made, by which the rats may enter 
but can not return. Seeing a possible escape 
by means of the fence they enter readily, but 
once within they discover that some men know 
more than a rat. There are many modifica¬ 
tions of this simple contrivance, which will 
doubtless occur to our readers, by which farm 
buildings, grain stacks, and other places which 
suffer greatly from rats, may ue made secure 
from their depredations. 
Preparing Poultry for Market in 
France. —In the vicinity of large towns in 
France, millions of fai chickens or capons are 
sent to market every year, an enormous supply 
going constantly to England. When the fowls 
are put up for fattening, they are fed almost en¬ 
tirely on crushed millet, or barley, (or a mix¬ 
ture of the two,) kneaded into a tough dough, 
to which a little butter or lard is added. Their 
drink is usually pure milk slightly sweetened 
with sugar; sour milk with sugar is frequently 
substituted. By means of this nourishing diet 
tire fowls acquire a delicate, white, and savory 
meat, and become fat in an incredibly short 
time—often in ten days. Fat poultry is never 
sent alive to market. Capons, chickens, and 
pigeons, are bled at the throat, hanging head 
down until all the blood has escaped. Geese 
and ducks are killed by a stab in the nape of 
the neck. The feathers are picked off with 
great care to avoid injury to the skin, and after 
the fowls have been washed clean, they are 
well rubbed with wheat bran, which whitens 
them; the butchering is done at night, and they 
are hung up with a few raw truffles in each 
body ; in the morning these are removed, hav¬ 
ing given a delicate flavor to the flesh. 
Native Breeds of Sheep. 
The United States possess every facility 
and requisite for the production of a great va¬ 
riety of sheep. Instead of importing wool of 
any kind, with our splendid facilities for pro¬ 
ducing both cheap and costly wool, we ought 
to export more than any other country. There 
are some coarse wools cheaply produced that 
may be made more profitable with us than the 
fine wools, yet we are trying to raise foreign 
breeds of sheep that deteriorate rapidly under 
the process of acclimation, and qualities of 
wool that are not in demand. Many a farmer 
has found the few fleeces of Cotswold or Lei¬ 
cester wool that he has had on hand almost un¬ 
saleable, because no country mill had the ma¬ 
chinery for carding long wool. At the same 
time our markets are flooded with the poorest 
kinds of mutton, oily, greasy, and fat, or ill- 
flavored and lean, because farmers have been 
tempted to raise sheep for which their pastures 
are totally unsuitable. Before there can be 
any success in this business, it must be entered 
upon and carried on with judgment. No farmer 
who has not the best facilities both for feeding 
and marketing sheep and disposing of the 
wool, should try to raise pure Cotswold, Lei¬ 
cester or Lincoln sheep, especially the latter 
two. Indeed, these sheep do not seem to be 
profitable under any circumstances, except in 
the hands of the most skillful shepherds. The 
Cotswold grades, or Cotswolcl-Merino crosses, 
furnish the best early lambs and the best mut¬ 
ton for the markets of large towns and cities. 
But early lambs cannot be shipped long dis¬ 
tances, and farmers situated more than 200 
miles from a good market cannot raise these 
lambs for that purpose. Where lambs and 
mutton are produced, woqfl becomes a secondary 
consideration, but where long wool can be sold 
readily the larger bodied sheep which yield a 
fleece of 8 or 9 pounds of wool will be the 
most profitable under certain conditions. And 
this is the most important consideration. To 
raise these sheep successfully, the pastures 
must be dry, healthful, fertile, and carry a good 
bite, and the soil and its culture must be such 
as to produce heavy crops of roots and green 
forage. It would be all the more satisfactory 
if the climate were such that late feeding upon 
rape, turnips, or other roots, upon the ground, 
and early feeding upon rye, clover, and other 
green crops could be practiced. This would 
enable the farmer to make a great saving, and 
yield a proportionately larger profit than the 
yard feeding through half the year upon crops 
harvested and stored at great cost. For in¬ 
stance, in the greater part of Virginia, parts of 
Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, and some 
other localities, similarly situated with regard 
to climate, the hurdling of sheep upon green 
or root crops might be practiced to a large ex¬ 
tent, and the cost of their feeding reduced to a 
minimum. Under these circumstances the 
Cotswolds might readily be made the basis for 
a very profitable class of sheep, different vari¬ 
eties of which might occupy different local¬ 
ities as became the most suitable. But it will 
surely result, that there will be failure and 
loss, if in all localities, however diverse they 
may be in soil, climate, and other important 
conditions, the endeavor is made to keep up 
and produce any one particular type of sheep. 
In other places in the East and North, where 
hurdling cannot be practiced, the extra price 
to be procured for early lambs and choice mut¬ 
ton in the great city markets, will make the 
house or yard feeding of sheep upon crops 
grown on richly manured land equally prolita* 
ble. But there are many localities still where 
it is difficult to keep sheep that require abund¬ 
ant pasture and roots for winter feed, but 
where mutton may yet be raised with profit. 
In many parts of Europe sheep are raised 
upon mountains that are aptly styled barren 
wastes, and salt marshes and sandy plains, 
where one of our native sheep, much used to 
hardship as it may be, could not exist. Yet 
the mutton of some of these sheep is sold at 
stores where fancy fruits and choice articles of 
food are kept, as an expensive luxury. The 
small Welsh sheep, whose hind quarter of the 
most delicate mutton may weigh four to six 
pounds, is fed upon rocky pastures as bleak as 
the sides of the granite mountains of New 
Hampshire; while an equally choice mutton, 
to the epicure, is raised in the salt marshes of 
the coast upon sedges and rushes. The chalky 
downs of Southern England, where the soil is 
too thin upon the chalk rocks ever to be 
plowed, produce the South Downs and the 
Hampshire Downs, whose mutton is very 
highly prized, and whose fleece, although short 
is thick, and valuable for manufacturing. 
The vast prairies of the West furnish exact¬ 
ly the conditions needed for these races of 
sheep; a short nutritious herbage, a perfectly 
dry soil, extensive open ax - eas, and the motet 
salubrious atmosphere, ever fresh and in vigor- 
