50 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
blisliment of liis oto. The great red brother, “ is 
not clever enough to get over the fence, but remains cross, 
moody, and discontented, on what lie evidently considers 
the wrong side of it. Truly, one of our west country ama¬ 
teurs had good reason for sending his beautifnl iien of 
six young pullets to Birmingham last year. 
The poultry exhibitions which now occur so often perform 
their mission well, occasioning great improvement in all 
I good breeds of fowls; but might they not be made con- 
' dusive to another?—to a more general, if less interesting, 
1 end, by improving the general stock of poultry in the 
’ country? Let a cottagers’ show be carried on conjointly 
1 with the local shows, for the encouragement of those who, at 
present, only want the means to compass the choice varieties. 
Let a prize of a cock, a cockerel and pullet, or a sitting of 
eggs of some first-rate breed be offered to the cottager who 
can show a pen of six common fowls in the best health and 
j order, giving at the same time a strong recommendation 
’ that for the future, in breeding, the good sort shall be 
I adhered to, and kept distinct. If the show should take 
I place in winter, the eggs might be claimable early the 
: following spring. Some persons, from not liaving tried the 
I experiment, are fearful of sitting travelled eggs, but they 
j need not be so. Some time back, Mr. Punohard sent me a 
I table of the result of his experience in this particular, by 
! wliich I find, that out of 001 eggs sent to 03 different places, 
after travelling distances by sea and land varying between 
14 and 305 miles, 505 chickens were hatched; about eleven- 
eighteenths—no bad result. My own experience has proved 
even more favourable than his, and I have found that eggs 
whicli have travelled immense distances, have often produced 
a larger proportion of chickens than those hatched at home; 
only showing, perhaps, that when we give a guinea for a few 
eggs, we bestow more care and attention on them, and the 
hen in charge of them, than when we merely fetch tliem 
from our own hen-house. I am sure there are some, I have 
little doubt there are many amateurs, who would assist an 
endeavom- like this, which I suggest above, by giving the 
prizes, if the poultry societies could manage the other 
arrangements, and it would surely conduce towards the 
result, for the accomplishment of wliich so many have 
written and laboured—general improvement in poultry 
throughout the country. In arranging the details of these 
and all other shows, the confidence of exhibitors especially, 
should be supported by the most exact precision respecting 
the prizes, which should be carefully noted according to 
precedence, and ties entered as such. 
All portions of the country boast their poultry shows now. 
When will London have hers also? Tlie exigence which 
still delays a tiling so desirable in the eyes of most amateurs, 
is, I believe, a difficulty in finding some gentleman, with 
leisure, to undertake the management. 
A show of Cochin-China fowls, and no mean one, we 
shall, however, shortly see in London ; but a show without 
contrast or competition, for on the second of November, 
Mr. Sturgeon will sell by auction, in Baker street, a large 
portion of his far-famed stock. Anster Bonn. 
(Acting up to the suggestion thus made, our liberal cor¬ 
respondent will offer a cockerel and a sitting of eggs, as a 
first and second prize, to be competed for by cottagers at 
the approaching Exhibition of The Winchester and Southern 
Counties Society for the Improvement of Poultry. —Ed. C. G.) 
THE SHELDRAKE AND ITS HAUNTS. 
The first sheldrake which I ever saw, and the scene in 
which it made its appearance, remain firmly daguerreotyped 
on my memory, after the lapse of many years. It was my 
good fortune to be spending the winter in Scotland; and 
those who have never seen Scotland cannot even dream 
what a beautiful country it is. I was staying on the banks 
of tliat noble river, the Ness, whose entrance into the sea is 
marked by the town of /Huer-ness. The Ness is remarkable 
for sev eral things : among others, for magnificent salmon. 
Man gets his share of these fish, but the slioals of seals 
which haunt the mouth of the river, appropriate the greater 
proportion of the finny prey. One salmon for breakfast, 
Qiie fqr dinner, and a third for supper, is a moderate allow- 
OCTOBEB 21. ■ 
I 
ance for each individual of this tribe of seals ; because, the 
meal ended, and his appetite satisfied, Mr. Seal does not put 
his cold fish, the remains of his twenty-pound salmon, into 
his lai’der, but lets it float away for the benefit of the poorer 
inhabitants of the waters, and amuses himself by catching 
a fresh one, whenever his mouth begins to water for a little 
snack. Many readers will ask, lohy we allow this robbery of 
our salmon fisheries,' and why we do not send the seals 
about their business ? But it is of little use arguing, who 
are the rightful owners of the fish, andybr whom tlie salmon 
ought to be preserved—for men, or for seals. A month, on ; 
the coast of Invernesshire, wiU teach the stranger that it is 
easier to talk of dispossessing the seals, than to do it. , 
' Salmon fishing, by human creatures, begins there on the ! 
first of February. The more snowy and sleety the day, the i 
better luck is expected. That day it sneio beautifully, as we i 
say in Norfolk; and I think our host caught half a dozen ^ 
fine fish to his own rod, and could have captured more. I 
was kindly furnished with taclde, on that and many subse- ' 
quent occasions. But the Ness, below the falls, is a diffi- ! 
cult river to fish, even for adepts; and, till then, I had I 
never thrown an artificial fly, nor seen even a live trout, 
much less a furious salmon, with the strength almost of a j 
hippopotamus. To do anything in that part of the Ness, : 
it is necessary to throw cleverly thirty yards of line, upon 
occasion, and to wield steadily the rod which throws it. The 
consequence was, that the more severely I flogged the water, 
the less notice would the salmon take of my flies. I some¬ 
times fancied they put then- heads out of the river on pur¬ 
pose to laugh at me. Then came a little temper and excite¬ 
ment which made matters worse. At one time, crack went 
the beautiful fly, of gold and silver and peacock’s feathers, 
off the end of the line, sounding like the exjilosion from a 
French postilion’s whip-lash; by-and-by, wlien my energies 
were collected for a throw which must get a “ rise,” envious 
shrubs in the background would detain my hook ; or the rod 
would be smashed in two, by the violence of the misplaced 
eflbrt. I would have given it up, but was good-naturedly 
urged to continue. Other people caught their salmon; my 
fly never entered a fish’s mouth. 
The valley of the Ness is lovely at all seasons. Bocks, 
woods, mountains, a rushing stream, arable lands, meadows, 
flocks and herds, huts, wreaths of turf smoke, are a few 
details of the panorama. Fishing soon became, with me, a 
mere pretence for the admiration of nature. That winter 
was mild, and often furnished pictures of perfect Alpine 
beauty : the mountain-tops were covered with snow down to 
a certain altitude, and then everything was green, and bright, 
and cheerful, and sunshiny. One day, when I had broken 
my rod for the dozenth time, I cannot imagine how, and 
was resigned to the usual good-humoured encouragement to 
try again next day, I mounted a commanding shoulder of 
a hni, and sat down to gaze around me. Soon, a beautiful 
bird came sweeping up the valley from the sea, in mid air, 
but still beneath me, and followed the course of the river, 
till it disappeared in the distance. It was a sheldralie, bril¬ 
liant with orange, white, and some dark glancing colours, I 
could not tell what. I had read in Willugliby, that it was 
“ of a mean bigness, between a goose and a duck,” but it 
looked larger than I expected, from the bright contrast of 
its hues, which are as conspicuous as those of a magpie, 
with the addition of greater variety. Tame sheldrakes must 
be pinioned, or they will afford very pretty sport to your 
gunning neighbours; and, therefore, in all the aviaries and 
ornamental waters that I have since visited, no bird of the 
kind has ever delighted me with a performance resembling 
that gaudy sweeping flight up the glorious valley of the 
Ness. I afterwards found that the birds are not uncommon 
in that neighbourhood, and that they are little sought after 
by sportsmen. They are good-for-nothing to eat, and their 
feathers are not usually employed for artificial flies. More 
metallic tints are in greater request: the poor little king¬ 
fisher, not found so far north, yields its skin in England, to 
be imported into “ the land o’ cakes.” Sheldrakes breed, 
too, along the coast, in the peculiar spots that suit them, as 
well as further south. A lighthouse keeper, who had served 
his turn in the extra solitude of Fern Island, told me that 
one of his summer amusements was to lay hands on the 
little sheldrakes hatched there, and to rear them for sale to 
the dealers in tame waterfowl. 
