FANCIERS’ 
JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
147 


(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
MARTINS. 
In the Fancier for February 19, the question is asked, 
‘How to encourage martins to take possession of bird- 
boxes ?’’? The answer is one of those simple things that 
makes us smile at our want of thought. In the early spring 
the blue birds first arrive, and take possession of all the 
boxes they have been in the habit of occupying from year 
to year, and also all of the new boxes that have been erected. 
The martins, arriving later in the season, return to their 
old nests, dislodging any intruders, or put up with such 
habitations as they can find unoccupied, or which they can 
drive other birds from. If, therefore, blue birds first occupy 
a new box, they will have eggs or young by the time the 
martins arrive, and it is difficult for the last to inspect and 
determine upon a box that may have been erected for them; 
but, if the box is kept closed until the blue birds are settled, 
-and only thrown open when the-martins arrive, there will 
be no difficulty, for after the martins once take possession of 
a haunt, no other birds can inhabit it in peace. It is dis- 
tressing as well as amusing to watch the return of martins 
to their accustomed home, when that home has been pre- 
empted by blue birds. They attack the housekeeping blues 
with the utmost ferocity ; some dragging out the intruders 
by main force, while others roll out eggs, young, and nests, 
making a clean sweep of all their housekeeping parapher- 
nalia; therefore keep your boxes closed until the martins 
arrive, and there will be no trouble. 
Dr. W. P. Morean. 

ON SELECTING FOWLS. 
GAME fowls have always been especial favorites of mine, 
not on account of their pugnacious qualities, although I do 
admire genuine courage whether it be in animal or man; 
and no breed of fowls set off an exhibition-room so well (we 
might perhaps except the Hamburgs) as the different va- 
rieties of game fowls. Taking them singly or together, 
there is much to admire in the different strains; one fancier 
breeds for weight and size, another for feather and color of 
legs, and so on to the end of the chapter. The colors and 
markings of the game fowl vary more perhaps than any other 
known breed; for instance, we have the Derby or Black, 
Red, Brown Red, Sefton, Irish Gray, Pile (or Pied) Ginger, 
White, and in fact there is hardly a breeder but what has 
some variety orstrain peculiartohimself. Thesesub-varieties 
are the result of a system of crossing, which to my mind 
tends very much to deteriorate from the beauty of the original 
stock. They may do very well for pit purposes or to take 
the place of the bull dog in a farm-yard, but I doubt very 
much if their fighting qualities are increased by the crossings 
above referred to. Where do you find anything more 
handsome than a trio of genuine Earl Derby Games, or 
what more beautiful than a clutch of little chicks from the 
same? Then imagine across from your beautiful Derby Cock, 
with a six or seven-pound hen, which your neighbor 
O’Callahan says was bred from a cock that won three battles 
in one day, or a cross between your delicate little hens and 
a big uncouth, topknot rooster, whose father Mr. Mull- 
doon tells you whipped the father of O’Callahan’s chicken 
in four consecutive battles. If there is any advantage to be 
gained by such intermingling of blood, I have up to the 
present time failed to see it. I am sure it does not add to 

-pers. 

their beauty, and as far as the fighting qualities are con- 
cerned, I have seen a better fight made by a fourteen-pound 
Brahma, than I ever saw made by what the cock-fighters 
term shakes. Game fowls more than any other breed 
(perhaps) possess all the qualities which would make them 
a valuable fowl for the farmer. They are good layers, fine 
table fowls, and as form others, can’t be beat, and even in 
towns or the outskirts of large cities, a cock and half dozen 
hens might be kept to good advantage. 
My advice to amateurs or fanciers of game fowls, is to 
procure the best and purest that can be had, and keep them 
so. Cross an Irish Gray with a Sefton, and you have dung- 
hills good enough to lay eggs and eat corn; so would the 
progeny of a dark and light Brahma or a White and Gray 
Dorking. 
THomas S. ARMSTRONG. 
TRENTON, N. J. 

CONTRARY CHICKENS. 
Mr. Cosierau, of Nelson Street, bought three hens Sat- 
urday night, and put them under a box until he could build 
a coop. Sunday morning he saw one of them in the street, 
and bestowing a brief curse on the somebody who had over- 
turned the box and jeopardized his property, he started out 
after it to drive it back into the yard. It took fifteen min- 
utes to convince him that that hen could not be driven into 
that yard, and then he attempted to catch it. Three times 
he rose up with his hands full of feathers and his chin full 
of sand, but still that hen eluded him. Once he got it cor- 
nered, and thought sure he had it, but it flew straight up over 
his head and flapped its wings in his face, and filled his eyes 
with dust. O, how mad Mr. Cobleigh was. It was Sunday 
morning. The bells were ringing, people were starting to 
church, and there he was in the street, with no coat or hat 
on, and with nothing but slippers on his feet, and every once 
in a while one of them would come off and fly through the 
air, and his naked foot would come in contact with the cruel 
gravel before he could stop himself. Then he would have to 
hop back on one foot after that slipper, while the hen stood 
on the walk and elocuted, and the little Sunday-school chil- 
dren stopped and laughed, and their parents reproved them 
and laughed too. 
Finally the hen got away from him and started down the 
street at a wonderful speed for a hen, and he started after 
her, his face redder than ever, and every time he cleared a 
rod he would stop and hop back two after one of those slip- 
When he reached the corner of Essex Street he 
jumped out of both slippers at once, but instead of stopping 
to go back he picked up a stick of wood andkepton. Then, 
as the hen dodged into a gateway, he hurled the stick and 
broke the leg of a strange dog, which added ifs piercing 
‘(ky-yi’’ to the entertainment. But Cobleigh didn't stop. 
He tore into the yard after his property, in his bare feet, and 
chased the hen into a wood pile, and caught it just as the 
owner of the premises came out and wanted to know what 
Cobleigh was going to do with Ais hen, and what he meant, 
any way, by getting drunk and kicking up such a hullabaloo 
ina peaceful neighborhood. Cobleigh first thought he would 
knock the man down with an ax, and what he could not eat 
of him bury under a barn, but the new comer succeeded in 
proving to Cobleigh that the hen was his, and then the mis- 
erable man burst into tears, and limped back home, where 
he found the three hens under the box.— Danbury News. 
