FANCIERS JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
onions, for I have seen fowls paralyzed or lose the use of 
their legs, and finally die from over-eating chopped onions. 
Cabbage is much better for winter, and grass for summer. 
Chickens will do best on corn meal and wheat screenings; 
while they stay with the hen they should have the same feed 
all the time. You would not give a baby any and every- 
thing; if you did, you would not raise many. I put my 
chickens out doors in a warm dry place, and feed them, twice 
a day; early morning, so they will not run in the grass and 
‘get drabbled searching for food; and in the afternoon, so 
they will brood before dew falls, or if too early in the spring 
for dew, before evening chills. I seldom ever loose a chicken 
after they are strong enough to stand up. I have seen salt 
recommended to be put in chicken feed; if I wanted to kill 
mine quick, I would mix in a good quantity of it, and feed 
tothem. Ihave also seen recommended boiled addled eggs ; 
I think them unwholesome, but others can use them if they 
wish. Some say ‘‘ wheat screenings are useless,’’ but I find 
at $1.65 per hundred, and at least three-fourths wheat, they 
are much cheaper than clear wheat, and the cheapest feed I 
have ever used. I bought some cracked wheat, and paid 
six dollars per hundred for it, but did not see much differ- 
ence, except in price. Very respectfully yours, 
C. A. PITKIN. 
HARTFORD, Conn., April 7, 1874. 

-_ 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
Epitor JOURNAL, 
I have a valuable hen that lays about every other day a 
soft-shell egg. She will sometimes be on: the nest two 
hours; then again she will go off and on several times 
without laying. There is plenty of old plaster, gravel, egg 
shells, broken bone, and chalk for her to use, but it all 
seems to be of no benefit. She is not fat, but in a good 
healthy condition. Will you, or some of your readers, tell 
me of aremedy? I would also like to know what amount 
of epsom salts and castor oil is considered a dose for an adult 
fowl. Yours, R. 
FUuLToN, N. Y., April 7, 1874. 


Hird xnd Small Let Department. 

HOW BIRDS LEARN TO SING AND BUILD. 
Wuat is instinct? It is the ‘‘ faculty of performing com- 
plex acts absolutely without instruction or previously ac- 
quired knowledge.’’ Instinct, then, would enable animals 
to perform spontaneously, acts which, in the case of man, 
pre-suppose ratiocination, a logical train of thought. But, 
when we test the observed facts which are usually put for- 
ward to prove the power of instinct, it is found that they are 
seldom conclusive. It was on such grounds that the songs 
of birds was taken to be innate, albeit a very ready experi- 
ment would have shown that it comes. from the education 
they receive. During the last century Barrington brought 
up some linnets, taken from the nest, in company of larks 
of sundry varieties, and found that every one of the linnets 
adopted completely the song of the master set over him, so 
that now these linnets—larks by naturalization—formed a 
company apart when placed among birds of their own spe- 
cies. Even the nightingale whose native sound is so sweet, 
exhibits, under domestication, a considerable readiness to 
imitate other singing birds. The song of the bird is, there- 

249 
fore, determined by its education, and the same thing must 
be true as to nest-building. A bird brought up in a cage 
does not construct the nest peculiar to its species. In vain 
will you supply all the necessary materials; the bird will 
employ them without skill, and will oftentimes even re- 
nounce all purpose of building anything like w nest. Does 
not this well-known fact prove that, instead of being guided 
by instinct, the bird learns how to construct his nest, just as 
a man learns how to build a house.—Popular Science Monthly. 

—_ 
FUN IN ANIMALS. | 
Ir is well known that lambs hold regular sports apart 
from their dams, which only look on composedly at a little 
distance to watch, and perhaps enjoy their proceedings. 
Monkeys act in the same manner, and so do dogs, the friski- 
ness of which resembles that of children. Mr. Leigh Hunt 
once told Dr. Robert Chambers that he had observed a young 
spider sporting about his parents, running up to and away 
from it in a playful manner. He has likewise watched a 
kitten amusing itself by running along past its mother, to 
whom she always gave a little pat on the cheek as she passed. 
The elder cat endured the pats tranquilly for a while, but at 
length becoming irritated, she took an opportunity to hit 
her offspring a blow on the side of the head, which sent the 
little creature spinning to the other side of the room, where 
she looked extremely puzzled at what had happened. An 
irritated human being would have acted in precisely the 
same manner. 

———______~+ ~—w oem + 
PET CROWS. 
Ir was my lot once upon a time to be down with fever in 
India. The room in which I lay was the upper part of an 
antiquated building in a rather lonely part of the suburbs of 
atown. It had three windows, close to which grew a large 
banyan tree, beneath the shade of whose branches the crew 
of a line-of-battle ship might have hung their hammocks 
with comfort. The tree was inhabited bya colony of crows. 
We stood—the crows and I—in the relation of over-the-way 
to each other. Now, of all birds that fly, the Indian crow 
must bear the palm for audacity. Living by his wits, he is 
ever on the best of terms with himself, and his impudence 
leads him to dare anything. Whenever by any chance 
Pandoo, my attendant, left the room, these black gentry paid 
me a visit. Hopping in by the score, and, regarding me no 
more than the bed-post, they commenced a minute inspection 
of everything in the room, trying to destroy everything that 
could not be eaten or carried away. They rent the towels, 
drilled holes in my uniform, stole the buttons from my coat, 
and smashed my bottles. One used to sit on a screen close 
by my bed every day and scan my face with his evil eye, 
saying, as plainly as could be:—“ You’re getting thinner and 
beautifully less; in a day or two you won’t be able to lift a 
hand, then I’ll have the pleasure of picking out your two 
eyiesne 
Amid such doings my servant would generally come to 
my relief, perhaps to find such a scene as this:—Two or 
three pairs of hostile crows, with their feathers standing up 
round their necks, engaged in deadly combat on the floor 
over a silver spoon or a tooth brush; half a dozen perched 
upon every available chair; an unfortunate lizzard, with a 
crow at each end of it, getting whirled widely round the 
room, each crow thinking he had the best right to it; crows 
