March: 23. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
487 
POLAND FOWLS. 
Wii.i. you kindly allow me to make a few remarks on your 
article in The Cottage Gardener, entitled “ Poland 
Fowls as recently exhibited.” Your arguments, at the com¬ 
mencement, having reference to the classification under one 
head of what were formerly known as Tufted Hamburgh s 
and those birds known as true Polands, are, to my mind, 
so satisfactory as to need no comment; as also your caution 
to exhibitors who are so fond of improving upon nature in 
the combs and crests of their Poland Fowls; and for their 
| own credit's sake, it is to be sincerely hoped they will profit 
i by the advice given them. 
The observations I intend to make (with your per¬ 
mission), apply to that portion of the article relative to 
the want of hardihood and profitless character of the Poland 
Fowl. Before going any farther, I must inform you that 
my experience of them has hitherto been confined to the 
Silver variety, and a reference to the prize lists of the prin¬ 
cipal shows in the kingdom, from last June to January, 
will show that my birds are no mongrels, they having 
attracted the favourable notice of the Judges, and were 
successful no less than ten times in that interval. I call 
attention to this fact, merely to show that they may be taken 
as a fair sample of their class; and I can safely say, that 
j as exhibition birds they are equal in point of endurance to 
any that were ever in a pen, having stood the wear and tear, 
| the long fastings, and feasting to repletion—this day food of 
| the most stimulating character, and the next day nothing— 
in addition to being confined, in some instances, forty-eight 
hours in the travelling hamper ; and sometimes, as in the 
case of the Surrey and Birmingham Shows, packed-up and 
sent from one place to the other without seeing home, yet 
my adult birds have never shown the slightest trace of 
indisposition or loss of appetite, in fact, were never one wit 
the worse for it. I cannot say the same of Dorkings or 
Cochins, which have both suffered more or less in going 
through the same ordeal from which the Polands came 
scatheless; the only other birds which I found stood it as 
well were the Brahmas, which I believe to be a much 
hardier race of birds than the Buff Cochins ; both the latter 
and the Dorkings were usually scoured for two or three 
days after coming home: the Polands never so. 
As to feeding, run, and general treatment, I fearlessly 
assert, that with me there has been less illness (and cer¬ 
tainly not one jot more care taken of them) than among 
my other fowls ; they are fed the same, roost the same, are 
quite as much exposed as the rest, and, as I have before 
stated, with the best results. With reference to their cha¬ 
racter as profitable fowl—in this, I think, they will also bear 
a more favourable comparison with many of their rivals 
than you are inclined to accord to them. As egg producers, 
in my opinion, they may fairly vie with their more favoured 
compeers the Spanish, I did not register the number of 
eggs produced from a given number of hens last season, 
but am doing so now, and, should you deem it worth your 
acceptance, will give you facts, which will, T fear not, bear 
me out in the opinion here expressed; their eggs are 
remarkably fine, and I will also weigh some of them, and 
when I send the number will also send the average weight, 
because, although an egg is an egg, yet, if ten. Poland eggs 
weigh as much as twelve Cochins, which I think they will, 
they would, in a great measure, make up for the extra 
number that the latter produce. 
My Polands, last season, laid up to October, and some 
of them commenced again the first week in February, and 
it must be remembered, that they continue to lay without 
intermission throughout the season, never becoming broody; 
this may, by some persons, be put down against them, but 
now that we have the Cochins, who will sit as many times 
in the season as you like to let them, it will only be neces¬ 
sary to keep three or four Cochin hens to have a constant 
succession of Poland chickens the year through. 
As a table fowl (and here I only speak from information), 
T am told that the flesh is more delicious than that of the 
Game Fowl. I will grant the chickens are somewhat 
i difficult to rear, and that they are not of such vigorous 
and rapid growth as Cochins, but the advantages I have 
already enumerated—their great beauty in plumage, sym¬ 
metry, and carriage—shall surely be allowed as some set- 
| off against that one argument in their disfavour, and which 
I I hold to be the only bad quality they possess, from the 
size of the crests (in good birds) the range of vision 
is necessarily very narrow, consequently, I find no diffi¬ 
culty in confining them within the most circumscribed 
limits, in fact, the partition which divides them from 
Brahmas and Cochins in my yard, is, in some places, little 
more than two feet high, but they never attempt to fly over. 
I am not sure that the difficulty in rearing the chickens I 
does not lie with the breeder; it is not improbable that they I 
require some mode of taeatment as yet undiscovered; but, 
by practice and perseverance, I think we shall be able, in J 
time, to rear Poland chickens as easily as any of their more 
fortunate brethren ; at any rate, I mean to try. I am in¬ 
duced to say this, from the fact that all my Poland chickens 
were as vigorous, as hearty, as good leeders, and got on as 
well, as any birds could bo desired to do till two months old 
(at which age we usually think the danger past); aboiit 
that period, and in many cases older birds, I had the morti¬ 
fication of seeing the most beautiful chickens, day after day, 
drooping their wings, and in a short time making their 
exit from the world of cliickendom; however, I persevered, 
tried various schemes and modes of treatment, and at last, 
with some very late chickens, was tolerably successful, 
rearing six out of eight hatched, now all alive and well. 1 
will let you know what success I have this season, and also 
my mode of treatment, whether beneficial or otherwise, and 
should be glad if some other Poland breeder would do the 
same, my object being the attainment of truth and mutual 
benefit. 
In the same paper, in answer to a correspondent, you say 
that Polands are much addicted to the habit of plucking 
and eating each other's feathers; to my sorrow, some of my 
best birds have suffered from this species of cannibalism, 
but in no one case has the perpetrator of the mischief been 
one of their own kind, but it alwa}'s has been the work of a 
Cochin or Dorking. I do not, for one moment, mean to 
doubt what you say on the subject, believing you have good j 
grounds for your opinion, or you would not have given it, \ 
but only intend to show, that in my experience, the Polands 
are the victims and not the perpetrators of the mischief. 
P. Jones. 
[Your promised communications will be most acceptable. 
Any one who will favour us with facts confers a boon upon 
us and our readers.— Ed. C. G.] 
SUGGESTIONS FROM THE GARDEN AND 
THE FIELD. 
Bg Cuthbert TV. Johnson, Esq., F.R.S. 
(Continued from page 404.) 
THE CHIEF SUSTAINERS OF LIFE. 
The way in which the gases of the atmosphere are made 
subservient to the demands of animal and vegetable life 
betrays the same benificence, and the same wisdom, that is 
apparent in the other works of the Creator. Composed 
of only three gases, one (the carbonic acid gas) incessantly 
absorbing by plants, who as regularly emit another (oxygen 
gas), it is evident that the proportion of these in the atmo¬ 
sphere, would, without some countervailing mode of supply, 
be speedily and materially altered, but this is prevented by 
all breathing animals absorbing the very gas which plants 
emit, and emitting the very gas which plants absorb. 
The delightful freshness and sense of pleasure ex¬ 
perienced by breathing pure air is known to every one; yet 
breathing, being an involuntary action, is one of those of 
which we rarely pause to consider its advantages and its 
pleasures. It is only a person in a confined room, of which 
the atmosphere is contaminated with unwholesome emana¬ 
tions, that is really sensible of theadvantages and pleasures of 
freely inhaling a pure atmosphere of the same unvarying 
composition as created and regulated by the wisdom and 
beneficence of its Divine Author. 
That this happy uniformity in the chemical composition 
of the atmosphere is preserved in all places, and in all 
seasons, has been ascertained by many comparative chemical 
examinations. Atmospheric air, in fact, has been analysed, 
as obtained from various parts of the earth, from the 
