July 22. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
201 
and help of the Lord, who “ caretli for the poor,” and can 
give increase to every endeavour, made in His love and 
fear, it does appear to me that great good would result. 
| We must not expect perfection in any thing here below, when 
: the hearts of men “ are deceitful and desperately wicked; 
1 who can know them ? ” hut great good would surely be done, 
: and if only one little portion of a parish was benefited, this 
! would be a blessing; and by not despising “ the day of 
J small things," yet greater things might arise. Let me 
] press upon the attention of my richer readers the subject 
of benefit clubs, supported by the shepherd of the flock, 
and conducted in a spirit boldly and decidedly religious. 
THE VANISHED HEN. 
“ I do’nt know what the endurance of the class Ayes may 
be in general, though there may be many reasons for sup¬ 
posing them patient of hunger, or rather, provided against 
its injurious effects. Many more instances and illustrations 
of this property of birds will occur to the scientific ornitho¬ 
logist than to the mere unsophisticated admirer of the 
beauties and habits of this interesting class of animated 
nature. I would suggest the ostrich as an instance. I do 
not mean to assert that in its wild state it lives entirely 
upon the anchors, iron cables, rings, and bolts of stranded 
vessels; or that in its state of semi-domestication its food is 
necessarily cellar-keys; but its faculty of digesting non is 
proverbial; the human auri sacra fames not more so. And 
as Dame Nature is too economical to be lavish, abhorring 
waste of means to an end quite as much as a vacuum, we 
may not attribute to the ostrich a West Indian steam-boat 
provision of boilers and furnaces, which may reduce iron 
and steel to a nutritious pulp in the shortest possible time. 
In the absence of such hypothesis, the bird-camel must be 
considered as patient of hunger as the camel of the desert 
is of thirst. We might better say, for hunger and thirst, the 
absence of food and water. Having erected this dogma on 
a basis which I may call irrefragable, if not are perennius, 
certainly as durable as iron, I proceed to an instance which 
came under my own observation respecting the endurance 
of abstinence by a unit of the class Aves, genus Gallus, 
variety non-descript. 
It was a gladsome day for me and my sublimer help, 
when we approached our emancipation from a dingy lodging, 
and our bran-new little vicarage was almost ready to receive 
us. Besides, I was to take nearly thirty acres of glebe-land 
into my own hands at the same time. When I followed the 
first load of my impedimenta —rightly so called in this if in 
no other case, for they had impeded my motions in a room 
l-32nd part of which was assigned to me as my dressing- 
room for above a-year-and-a-half—I beheld a cottager carry¬ 
ing to a sunny spot a little hen with a large batch, or clutch 
of newly-hatched chickens. The hen had a tinge of the 
golden pheasant, and a top-knot. She was pretty enough, 
with her large family, to awaken my sympathies, and to 
induce me to satisfy no common demand, or rather to gratify 
the cottager’s burning lust of filthy lucre by an uncommon 
| sacrifice of sixpences, as item first towards stocking my 
farm-yard. To this, sundry other specimens of the ovi- 
I positing and chicken-producing genus were soon added. It 
i would be ‘ beside my subject,’ as your logical and methodical 
; folk would say, to tell you that due respect was had to the 
J corollaries of eggs and chickens; need I name ham and 
bacon ? hut, as I make it a Religio Clerici to steal nothing 
from one topic to enrich another, I only allude in the most 
scrupulous manner to aught that might be deemed ex¬ 
traneous. Moreover, to wiredraw a narrative is a page- 
engrossing trick I especially detest and deprecate. In 
mediae res is my failing, I might almost say. Well, my sole 
mammal, if you will except a dog or two, and three or four 
cats, was a horse ; and this horse a mare. But my mammal 
wanted a warm bed the more, rather than the less, because 
she was solitary in a four-stalled stable. Straw was to be, 
and was, procured. It was deposited in an empty barn by 
the simple-operation of forking it in at the ‘ sheaf-hole ’ 
window. Now this empty barn and in-lay of straw are the 
very res media, as a poor Avis, myself, and my readers, if 
any, are to know. For the present we will leave the straw 
there, or only go to it as it may be wanted. 
My custom has always been, for now upwards of fifteen 
years, to go immediately after breakfast and with my own 
proper hands to feed my poultry. That goodly habit I have 
only very recently doffed in deference to a cunning Yankee, 
ycleped Mieaiah Cock, whose feeding trough I have adopted. 
It is upon the principle of letting out corn from a half-inch 
opening at the bottom of a hopper, formed by two inclined 
boards and two ends. I don’t much like it. Not that it 
does not answer well. Your birds are always secure of the 
power to feed themselves when, and as much as, they like. 
But they don’t much run after me now. They look mighty 
independent, and as if they wondered “ what master be 
corn’d for, aud what he be a wanting.” To return from this 
agreeable and instructive episode on Mieaiah Cock, his feed¬ 
ing troughs, it was till lately for many years my wont to feed 
my poultry every morning. At the date at which this nar¬ 
rative is laid, I went regularly down to my farm-yard for 
this purpose. One morning I called them together as usual, 
and found only five of my six hens. There was his impe¬ 
rious majesty, their sultan, and their downy pledges were 
there. I might call; hen sixth came not, answered not. I 
was stupified at my loss. I made many, various, cross, and 
coaxing, bitter, and beseeching inquiries. I suspected my 
servants of carelessness, or worse, and concealment, and all 
the world of the most heartless dishonesty. Every bag and 
every basket, that every man, woman, and child carried, did 
I regard with suspicion. I looked with a hard face at every 
mendicant, and an iron visage at every tramp. “ Stolen 
hen ” was written in every lineament of my countenance. I 
vehemently desired to make an ante mortem examination of 
all possible stomachs. Days and even weeks passed away ; 
no thief was taken, no hen restored. The heap of straw, 
which we left in the barn, began to subside by daily use. 
“ An thinks there be rattens i’ barn, or summut,” said my 
parish clerk and factotum. “ Catch ’em, Willison,” was my 
reply. But he was so urgent that I walked away, snatching 
up a big stick, offensive and defensive, with him to the barn. 
“An thinks an’eered un,” said factotum. “Well! I heard 
something. Is that a rat?” “’t be a rat, or fomart, an 
thinks.” “ Why, Willison, what a noise. Your rat, or fomart, 
or whatever it is, must be sadly asthmatic. What a croak¬ 
ing and wheezing ! ” “An ne’er 'eered un sa mich afore. 
Sal an rem-man (remove) stra’ ? ” “I think you might as 
well, and then we shall cure the fellow of his complaints at 
once.” So the straw was gradually and carefully removed 
by factotum. Self stood gasping with curiosity, and dogs 
auribus erectis. Now we approached the bottom ; factotum 
pounced at something, and I should have made, short work 
of it but for fear of hurting him. He had got it under his 
arms, and only a small layer of straw to remove. He drew 
it forth. The asthmatic rat or fomart was, as he shouted 
out, nought but (pronounce nor-but) “ an’d hin !" And my 
poor hen it was. She was alive, but light as a feather, and 
weak as claret-and-water. She made an effort to sit up and 
gape a strange attempt at “ How d’ye do ? ” The poor 
creature had happened to be in the barn, and under the 
sheaf window, and was buried in the aforesaid straw. She 
had laid there within two or three days of three weeks. She 
might have obtained a grain of com out of the straw, but 
how had she done without anything to drink ? 
I supplied her immediately with wanned milk ad libitum. 
She drank as if she never meant to give over. Soon after¬ 
wards she had some nice warm pulpy food given her, of 
which she would then have eaten more than I deemed good 
for her case. She rapidly regained her plumpness, strength, 
and facetiousness, and was many times after that “ in the 
straw,” to our better supply and great satisfaction. “ All's 
well that ends wellso ends my veracious tale. 
The moral is, that we ought never to throw straw into a 
barn till we have looked and ascertained that we are not 
burying a very useful specimen of a nondescript ovi-posi- 
tress. She was a brown hen, somewhat black-pencilled; 
but nature had not thought her finished till she had been 
turned out into a storm of adhesive and unmelting snow.” 
R. G. S. B. 
BLACK POLAND FOWLS. 
Having for many years been a careful amateur breeder of 
black Poland fowls (with white crests), I beg to offer a few 
jottings as to their merits. 
