FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 

POULTRY ON A LARGE SCALE. 
Ir seems to be conceded that the general result in attempt- 
ing to breed poultry on a large scale has been unfortunate. 
At the same time it is also apparent that in nearly all these 
experiments the true conditions of success have not been 
observed. The proportion of care and room given to small 
flocks has not usually been extended to these large ones, and 
hence epidemics were more easily engendered, and when 
started, spread with such power and rapidity as to break up 
the plan, and discourage others from attempting it. The 
cost of feeding a large flock is an item calculated to frighten 
timid breeders without abundant capital, particularly during 
seasons when fowls are not remunerative, and this had aided 
not a little in prematurely closing up some establishments 
where more or less of success might have been achieved. 
What I have seen of these experiments on a large scale, 
I remember only one instance where the space assigned a 
large flock seemed at all adequate—that of Warren Leland, 
who gave his flock fifteen acres of rough land, and provided 
them with ample shelter for bad weather, and all the con- 
veniences for laying and hatching without unnecessary 
crowding. ‘This was sensible; and it certainly seems plausi- 
ble that if others would do likewise as to space and care, 
this problem of poultry as an occasional specialty in farm- 
ing might receive a satisfactory solution. The kind of land 
needed in poultry farming does not matter much ; what is 
wanted more than anything else is room—a wide range. If 
rough, rocky and bushy, no matter; if there are streams 
through it, so much the better; if the land is good enough 
for grain or grass, it becomes simply a question of profit be- 
tween cultivated crops or a crop of chickens, and that can 
be tested. Until proof is brought to the contrary, I have 
faith to believe that if chickens are ever profitable in flocks 
exceeding a size sufficient to dispose of the table refuse 
usually given them, and the grain and insects they can pick 
up in their ordinary range—they will also be profitable in 
the case of a man who will manage them in the same liberal 
spirit with which cattle are managed. Due regard must be 
had to the value of the land assigned them, but in regions 
where rough land is plenty, as in New England, and much 
of it literally good for nothing at all except to grow bushes 
or furnish a range for something which needs space more 
than cattle do, plenty of poultry farms might be established, 
and that on a basis which would lift the business out of its 
present haphazard category. It will of course require skill 
and patience, close observation as to habits and breeds, a 
judicious selection of stock, good judgment in feeding 
and the rearing of chickens, and above all, a thorough taste 
—natural or acquired—for such work; but with these con- 
ditions, who will say that it will not succeed ?—Country Gen- 
tleman. 
= 
DOMESTICATING ANIMALS. 
WHATEVER Of original instinct remains with domestic 
animals, is generally shown in full force in the case of their 
young; and, so strong is the maternal affection, that instances 
have occurred of their voluntarily adopting others than their 
own. I have known a cat to adopt a squirrel among her 
kittens. A remarkable story is told of a terrier which took 
charge of a brood of young ducks, having lost her own young. 
She was greatly alarmed, however, when they went into 
the water, and when they came to land she took them up, 
one by one, and carried them to her kennel. Singularly 

other dwellings. 

9 

enough, the next year she adopted two cock chickens; but 
when they began to crow she was as much alarmed as she 
had been by the waywardness of the ducklings} and always 
suppressed, by some manner of discipline, every such at- 
tempt! 
If we consider the injury we should suffer if the vermin 
on which the cat preys were allowed to increase without 
that check, her domestication will appear of no slight im- 
portance. The estimation in which Whittington’s famous 
cat was held by the foreign king is quite credible. The ser- 
vice which this sly, prowling character renders, is an inter- 
esting illustration of the inherent virtue, in the great plan 
of nature, of elements which appear from some points of 
view unmitigatedly evil. 
The taming of solitary specimens of different species is 
not uncommon. Though the taming itself is easy, the lack 
of hereditary familiarity and subjection gives the creature’s 
manners much eccentricity; and his moral conduct as a 
member of civilized society is rather exceptionable. He is 
continually relapsing into the old paganism, and his in- 
stincts break out in a very amusing manner. 
The beaver is easily made a household pet; but he will 
set himself at work, with many a wise look, in the proper 
season, at building a dam—perhaps across a corner of the 
parlor, with’ toys, books, newspapers, and whatever else he 
can lay paws upon. The crow is very proficient under 
training ; but his hereditary propensities do not forsake him, 
and he becomes an adroit ‘‘snapper-up of unconsidered tri- 
fles.”’ A tame woodchuck, I knew of, was wont to bury 
himself on the hearth, leaving only the tip of his nose visible 
out of the ashes. 
We have been told of an old negro who had built his 
house in a wild and mountainous place at a distance from 
He was a singular, lonely man; but he 
enticed numerous wild creatures out of the woods for com- 
panionship. Hares, gray squirrels, flying squirrels, birds of 
various kinds, foxes, raccoons, &c., were his household pets. 
But such of his rude neighbors as occasionally came to his 
house, began to shrug their shoulders at the appearance of a 
formidable-looking rattlesnake in the midst of the happy 
family.—Germantown Telegraph. 

+ 2oe + 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE. 
Does any one that has the control of children (either pa- 
rent or guardian) stop for a moment to consider the bad 
effect that the stupid nonsense contained in the children’s 
literature of the present day has upon the minds of their 
little ones? Mother Goose’s Melodies, Jack the Giant-Killer, 
and other trash of the same order are, in my opinion, merely 
stepping-stones to such works as Jack Sheppard, Dick Tur- 
pin, &c. Nor do they stop bere. We even find in our Sunday- 
schools, books that are but a type of the above-mentioned 
works (although under a different name), wherein the wri- 
ters try (by working up their imagination to the highest 
pitch), to tell how good little Harry, after living a few 
years in this wicked world, was brought on his death-bed, 
and after converting a drunken father, was suddenly spirited 
away to some far-off place, beyond the bounds of time and 
space ; or how bad Dick lived to be a man, and after killing 
some friend in a street fight, met himself some horrible fate, 
ending by being consigned to some subterranean place (the 
exact locatity not mentioned) to be tortured forever. 
