January 26 . 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
329 
where a restriction is placed in the number of consorts to 
be allowed the male bird. The limit to which our author 
would restrict the harem, namely, three hens, is, we appre¬ 
hend, unnecessarily close, and, under ordinary circum¬ 
stances, we should feel no cause for anticipating inferior 
produce, provided the male bird be in good condition, where 
five or six hens were permitted to run with him. Our 
remark is general on this point, for certain cases would, 
doubtless, claim exemption from our more liberal allow¬ 
ance, where, for instance, every effort was put in requisition 
to breed the choicest specimens for exhibition; or where, 
again, the cock was young, or the narrow boundaries of a 
small yard was all the space allowed for their run. In 
former days, also, another class of birds would have been 
as carefully set apart, namely, the Game-fowls that were 
destined to produce champions for the pit, where these, and 
frequently but two hens, were thought as many as would be 
wisely left with the cock. 
Chapter ix., bearing the ominous title “ Revolutionary,” 
touches on the question of how far it may be practicable to 
establish permanent races from cross-breeding the present 
different varieties. In a matter'like this, where the opinions 
of experienced persons are at variance, we must express our 
own thoughts with caution, but we cannot refrain from an 
acknowledgment of our mistrust of any such result, so far as 
we may judge from trials. At page 31, Mr. Furneaux thus illus¬ 
trates his theory, while alluding to the delicacy of the Dorking 
race, which he thinks might be invigorated without any 
lasting prejudicial effects in the breed, “ by the infusion of a 
dash of Game blood." “ The progeny of a Game cock and 
Dorking Hen will be half-and-half, all of which, with the 
exception of a single cockerel, should be consigned to the 
cook, and the survivor should have as little of a Game 
appearance as possible. If put with Dorking hens, the 
chickens will be quarter Game ; and the same plan being 
pursued for another generation, the cross will be reduced to 
an eighth, after which there will be little chance of the 
birds ‘ crying bade.' ” 
Now, this argument is based on the hypothesis that in 
breeding from fowls of different families the produce will 
present a proportionate combination of the characteristics 
of both parents. But is this so ? In few cases, we believe, 
is the amalgamation by any means so perfect, and in the 
chickens of such a brood we should expect to find some 
bearing a close resemblance to one parent, and some repro¬ 
ducing the features of the other, while comparatively few 
could be correctly termed half-and-half. If this uncertainty 
prevailed in the first cross, still more questionable would be 
the chance of fixing the Game character at the exact quarter 
in the next generation. Since, therefore, with all our care, 
we can never be positively certain in what proportions the 
desired combination may be brought about, the advantages 
to be gained by cross-breeding fowls appear to present so 
great a hazard of injuring our pure breeds, that few beyond 
those to whom the test of the experiment is sufficient to 
interest will be likely to take shares in this lottery. The 
introduction of a “pile ” Game-fowl into a strain of black¬ 
breasted reds is said to have made its appearance after a 
lapse of fifteen years, when, moreover, for many generations 
not a symptom of it had been apparent. Wo certainly be¬ 
lieve that in nine cases out of ten the Game blood, in such 
an instance as that suggested by Mr. Furneaux, would be 
bred out in three or four generations, from the universal 
tendency in Nature to revert quickly, in such unions, to the 
type of one or other of the original parents. All we contend 
for in this, as in other crosses between the different breeds 
of fowls, amounts to this, that it cannot be said that such 
produce generally will exhibit in form, feather, or properties, 
any very near approach to the proportion of the parents’ 
features to which their origin would entitle them. 
But we should be guilty of great injustice to Mr. Fur¬ 
neaux were we to leave our readers under the impression 
that he himself is in favour of the practice we have just 
spoken of. So far from it, indeed, that he expressly says 
(page 22), “ But, although I maintain the practicability of 
forming new varieties, either by taking advantages of the 
freaks of Nature, or by pursuing some, systematic course, I 
am by no means an advocate for the trial of the experiment. 
To say nothing of the confusion and mongrelising that 
would inevitably ensue if the practice were generally adopted, 
I do not think that the public taste would encourage the 
endeavour to inundate us with a multitude of new races. 
There is something in John Bull’s composition, which, so 
long as he is a bona-fule Englishman, acts as an useful drag 
upon his spirit of enterprise, and reduces its speed within 
controllable limits. With his descendants it is otherwise; 
and the go-ahead mania of the United States is continually 
developing itself in such characteristic proceedings as the 
manfacture of wooden nutmegs, Aztec children, orBruhma- 
Pootra fowls, the last two of which have been rejected by 
our ethnologists and ornithologists during this year. Whilst, 
then, I venture to uphold the revolutionary doctrine of the 
possibility of forming new varieties of poultry, I in no way 
maintain the desirability of it.” 
We have said enough to satisfy our readers that Mr. Fur- 
neaux’s pamphlet is the work of a thoughtful, unprejudiced 
mind: that, discarding compilation from the labours of 
predecessors in the same tract, details the actual results of ! 
practical poultry-keeping ; as such, therefore, it will, doubt¬ 
less, be duly welcomed by those to whom its subject-matter 
is an object of interest. 
DISEASES OE POULTRY. 
GAPES.—INFLAMMATION OF THE WINDPIPE. 
Fancy a young practitioner called to the bedside of a 
patient who lies gasping for breath in the agonies of 
suffocation; and fancy the young practioner, either from 
want of observation of the symptoms, or from being pre¬ 
judiced, taking the disease to be inflammation, and treating it 
as such ; and the weakened patient dying, and the cause of 
the stoppage of the windpipe being discovered to have been 
mechanical, and with no relation to inflammation at all: 
What would bo thought of that practitioner? If he were 
timid, hesitating, or erring through want of more perfect 
information upon the subject, we should pity while we 
blamed him: now let us carry the simile into the poultry 
yard, and let the practitioner be the fancier of fowls, who in 
the course of the year has dozens, if not hundreds of 
feathered patients, who, if they cannot speak, yet can open 
their mouths in a manner quite expressive of the character 
of difficult respiration. How is he to treat these poor little 
chickens that every now and then open their mouths and 
“gape?” If he belong to the positive school, he will 
“Booh! Pooh!” any idea but that of the disease being 
inflammation, and ho will treat the poor weak little chickens 
with Tartar Emetic, and they will die —and it only remains to 
write a book to prove that they ought to have lived! But if 
he be a practitioner of the other class, he will, with all 
modesty, trace effects to causes ; he will cautiously observe 
symptoms without preconceived notions about the nature of 
the disorder, seeking earnestly what light the experience of ! 
other practitioners may throw upon the subject; and the 
following is a synopsis of what he will find, and which, I 
think, shews pretty clearly that a great deal that is practical 
and good has been put forth and verified, step by step, and , 
very much of it in the pages of the “ Cottage Gardener.” 
Fowls seem to be threatened with suffocation from two 
disorders very different in their nature and symptoms ; the 
first, which is known by the name of “ gapes,” being peculiar 
to chickens, and being the result of a mechanical ob¬ 
struction : the other being an inflammation of the windpipe 
occurring in full-grown fowls, and being of the nature of j 
“croup.” 
Gapes. —In wet, cold weather, or soon after it, the chickens 
are observed to gape suddenly, and to do so “ at intervals,’’ 
“with a muscular motion of the neck, as if they were 
endeavouring to dislodge something from the throat,” in the 
intervals of gaping the breathing being natural: experience 
has shewn that this proceeds from the presence in the wind¬ 
pipe of one or more small red worms, of about tliree-quarters- 
of-an-inclx in length ; and that if these parasites are allowed 
to grow or develope, that the chicken will die suffocated; an 
after-examination of the windpipe displaying no trace of 
inflammation; but, that if the chicken affected with gapes 
be made to swallow the vapour of turpentine at intervals, or 
if a small portion of turpentine be passed down the windpipe 
so as to reach the worms, they will be dislodged, coughed 
