houses are so built as to require any distinct contrivance for ventilation; in cases, however, where the doors and windows are air-tight, means should be afforded for a proper supply of fresh air; there should be an opening near the bottom, and another at the top, these should be covered with pieces of perforated zinc, to prevent any direct draught of cold air, which is very injurious. Cleanliness is also a consideration of the highest importance in a fowl-house; if ashes or sand be used, and the dung removed daily, this is readily secured; and in order to prevent, as far as possible, the annoyance of vermin, the houses should be limewashed once or twice a year, and the birds also be provided with a box full of dry dust or ashes to bathe in.

They should also be furnished with a heap of dry lime-rubbish,* with a view to keeping them in health, and the hens especially in good laying order, and with a good sand, ash, or dust bath out of doors as well as in. They are most determined pulveratrices, and love to perform this operation in the sunshine and open air. If afforded the means of gratifying themselves with this dry bathing they will shuffle the dust or sand so effectually over themselves, raising their feathers by means of the cuticular muscle at the same time, that it penetrates to the root of every feather, and dislodges the parasites of which they are so anxious to rid themselves. If not supplied with the proper materials they will in dry weather sink holes in the ground, and so form dusting places. But to return to the fowlhouse :

The difference between the health of fowls thus cleanly and warmly housed, and that of those compelled to roost in a dark, damp, dirty habitation, is very great, these latter never becoming in good condition. So injurious is damp

and cold that I have known instances in which all the inhabitants of a poultryhouse have been attacked with roup from an east window having been left open on a cold wet night, and it has been found by experiment that scrofula may always be produced in chickens by confining them in damp, cold, and dark habitations.

FEEDING.

This most essential branch of

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poultry care is now much better understood than it once was, but still there are many who, when spoken to on the subject, reply in homely phrase, a bellyful is a bellyful,' ignorant that the food taken into the system has many purposes to effect; and hence the difference of opinion among keepers of poultry, who have, too many of them, never considered the bearing of particular kinds of food on the constitution of the animal. There is no doubt that some food when swallowed and digested is directed towards the keeping up the natural warmth of the animal, that another portion has to increase the growth of the body, sustain the strength, or in other words replace the expenditure and waste that occurs daily; nay more, that there are particular kinds of food adapted to the different duties, so to speak, to be performed by the meal. It, therefore, becomes of importance to distinguish warmth-giving food, such as rice and potatoes, or other substances of which starch forms the great bulk, from flesh-forming food, which is present largely in wheat, oats and oatmeal, peas, beans, middlings and sharps, and also in a less degree in barley and maize. Nor is it of less importance to know that bonemaking food exists in larger proportion in the husk, or outer part of grain, than in its interior or kernel; and that fat-forming food, derived, as might be expected, from oily substances, occurs largely in the yellow variety of maize, middlings, and bran.

Those who would go deeply into the subject should consult the works of Liebig, Johnston, and others. Suffice it here to state that experi ments tend to the conclusion that none of these kinds of food can serve the purposes of the others; in other words, that neither warmth-giving

fat-forming substances capable of effectually adding to the flesh of a growing animal, nor can true flesh-forming food increase the quantity of fat.

Barley, the poultry-keeper's staple, is preferred by fowls to oats, and

has been ascertained to contain from twelve to fifteen pounds of fleshforming substance, sixty of starchy, and two or three of oily substances in every hundred.

Oats are not relished in the grain by fowls, probably on account of the large proportion of husk present in them; but in the form of grits or oatmeal are picked up with the greatest avidity, and in this state contain from fourteen to nineteen of flesh-forming, sixty of starchy, and five to eight pounds of fatty substances in every hundred.

No grain (says Mr. Tegetmeier) contains a larger proportion of flesh-forming substances than oatmeal; it is, therefore, the best adapted to growing animals, and I have found that chickens make much more rapid progress when it forms the chief portion of their food than when fed on any other substances. Cochin and Spanish chickens show its good effects by the rapidity with which they feather when fed with it.

Wheat is extensively used by some amateurs and breeders of choice races; by those especially to whom the cost of the material used for food is of little or no moment; but it is not more nutritious than oatmeal, though it would be rather difficult to persuade the masses of the people who are the most interested in the question of cheap and nutritious food that such is the fact. Wheat contains from ten to nineteen pounds of flesh-forming nutriment, fifty-five of starchy, and from two to four of oil in every hundred.

in

From five to nine pounds of oil every hundred is contained in the yellow varieties of Indian corn or maize; but it does not put on flesh quite so well as barley, containing only twelve per cent. of flesh-forming food, and seventy of starchy substance. Cochins take it with avidity. Dorkings and Spaniards turn away from it where they have the choice of other grain.

Rice should never be given to growing chickens; it is the least nutritious of all grains. Almost entirely composed of starch, it yields only seven per cent. of flesh-forming food, but is a useful variety in poultry diet, and much relished. The proportion of fat-forming food in rice is almost null; nevertheless when boiled and mixed with a little

curd or fat it may be given with advantage as a change, occasionally, to fatting fowls which have been well kept previous to cooping, and is said to add to the whiteness of the flesh.

Bran, pollard, middlings, and sharps our author regards, not without reason, as most valuable additions to the food of poultry :

In the first place they are economical, and they contain a very high proportion (nineteen per cent.) of flesh-forming substances, and a very considerable quantity of oil (three to five per cent.). Another circumstance which adapts them to the use of chickens is the large proportion of bone-making materials they contain.

Cooked food is desirable because it gives the stomach less work to do. Mr. Tegetmeier strongly recommends the following cooked food as supplying all the substances requisite to support a healthy and vigo rous existence :

One peck of fine middlings and half a peck of barley-meal, placed in a coarse red ware pan, and baked for about an hour in a side oven, or until the mixture is thoroughly heated throughout; boiling water is then poured in, and the whole stirred together until it becomes a crumbly mass; if too much water is added the mixture becomes cloggy, a defect which is easily remedied by stirring in a little dry meal. The advantage of this method is that the food is prepared with scarcely any trouble, and there is no fear of its being burnt as in boiling.

Sometimes the barley-meal is omitted, and the baked middlings mixed with rice which has been previously boiled. This mixture forms the stock of my old fowls, a liberal supply of grain being given during the day.

There is nothing new under the sun. We remember something very like this in the days of our youth, when we prided ourselves on our matchless white Dorkings; but the baking is a great improvement to the parching before the fire which was then practised. No better or more heartening food can be given.

Potatoes, beans, peas, and lentils have their admirers. The tuber is a good variety where starch is required; but the pulse, though containing a larger amount of fleshforming food-peas proverbially stick to the ribs is too stimulating to be wholesome, and many diseases

may be traced to the continued use of it. Hemp-seed wonderfully increases the production of the eggs, but it is a dangerous practice to give it, and burns the candle at both ends, largely injuring the constitution of the birds. Cooked parsnips, carrots, and turnips are much relished-parsnips for choice-and are useful and wholesome as a variation of diet. Fresh green vegetables are indispensable.

The most advantageous animal food for fowls, and on which they make the most rapid and healthy progress, consists in the worms, snails, and insects that they obtain naturally when unconfined; and I do not think that there is any other kind of food which conduces so much to their healthy condition; where it cannot be obtained a small quantity of fresh meat (either raw or cooked) may be chopped small and given to them; it is, however, but a poor substitute for the natural insect food.

Poor indeed. As for the practice of hanging up meat to putrefy for the sake of the maggots, we hold it in abhorrence. But a wasp's nest in the season of pupa affords a glorious and wholesome treat.

Greaves from the tallow-chandlers we hold to be abomination, though some pertinaciously give it to increase the quantity of eggs, the flavour of which, we believe, suffers accordingly. This half putrid filth, for it is little better, is used in some piggeries as food, and pretty pork it must make, only to be surpassed in quality by that fed on horseflesh.

All the fatting in the world will

not relieve the animal fibre of stock, of any description, from the deterioration of early foul or bad feeding before the fatting process commences. Education, sir, education,' -as we once heard an enthusiastic pig-master exclaim, pointing to his well and wholesomely filled troughs and comely grunters, which were regularly washed with soap and water-education, sir, is

everything.' Two-thirds of the hard, dry-fibred pork-so fat and fair to look on when beheld by an inexperienced eye-is due to the abominable early feeding, which no fatting pen

can correct.

Water, above all, is of the utmost consequence to poultry; and as

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their supply is pure or impure, so will be their state of health or disease.

BREEDING.

Those who delight in artificial hatching, whether in hot-beds, ovens, eccaleobions, or hydro-incubators, and rejoice in_artificial mothers, should consult Raumur, Bucknell, Moubray, and Young, and go to Leicester-square. Those who would follow nature, cannot do better than attend to Dixon,* and the plain practical teaching of Tegetmeier.

I am aware (says the latter) that these recommendations to leave natural operations to nature are contrary to what are frequently found in books; but I am merely writing the results of my own experience, and I have always found the more the hatching hens are meddled with the worse the result. It is a notorious fact, that when a hen steals a nest in some copse or place where she can remain unmolested, she almost invariably brings forth a more numerous and stronger brood than when she sits in a hen-house.

But, in the hen-house, the nearer we approach to the principles manifested by the dear goddess the better. We, therefore, with our author, set our faces against contiguous rows of pigeon-holes,' as he calls them, as encouragers of vermin, in consequence of close crowding, and the difficulty of thorough cleansing in such cases. Separate shallow baskets or boxes, covered if you will, as a hen hates nothing more than to be disturbed in the least degree when laying, should be provided. In these some well-sifted coal ashes or drift sand should be placed, so as partially to fill the basket or box, and over it a little short wheaten or rye straw. Hay, which is excellent for packing eggs when sent to a distance, should be carefully avoided for the nest, as too heating. The seeds, besides, are apt to ferment; and instances have been known of the loss of the entire clutch, in consequence of the hen having been placed, as it were, on a bed of hay-seeds. The chicks were glued to the shell, and so destroyed. The natural position of the nests of gallinaceous birds is on the ground; and where there is no fear of rats, stoats, et id genus omne, they may

be so placed in the house, if it be kept perfectly dry and clean. At all events the nest should be low enough to be reached without effort; and the basket or box should be sufficiently filled so as to permit the hen to leave without having to spring up from the eggs, and to return without jumping down upon them at the risk of breaking them. There is no objection to having a less number of nests than hens, which will be seldom all sitting together; for hens have no repugnance to laying in a common receptacle; on the contrary, the sight of eggs seems to stimulate them to lay, whence the practice of placing a nest egg, which should be artificial, and made of some light wood-for if a nest egg breaks the nest becomes terribly fouled. Chalk, or an oval ball of whiting is not so good; for we have heard that the hens pick up occasionally bits that fall off, or even peck the ball itself, and so learn to eat eggs. The most secluded and darkest nests are preferred by the hens, which should be disturbed as little as possible, and not at all on the twentieth and twenty-first days, when they are hatching. The meddling at such times, and taking away the chicks from the mother, whose equable warmth it is so difficult to imitate, and keeping them by the fire in flannel till the hatch is complete, is mischievous. If any interference is permitted, the empty shells may be removed; for it sometimes happens that the unhatched eggs slip into them, and the unfortunate chick, which is endowed with the power of chipping one shell, has not strength enough for breaking through a double prison wall. The addled eggs may also be taken away. The absurd and barbarous plan of cramming the new-hatched nestlings with peppercorns is absolutely deleterious. A chick requires neither food nor drink on the day on which it is hatched; on the contrary, both are then injurious, and interfere with the absorption into the system

of the yolk which is, in fact, the chick's first food. Mr. Tegetmeier recommends two-thirds sweet coarse oatmeal, and one-thrid barley meal, mixed into a crumbly paste with water this is very much relished, and the chicks make surprising progress on it. He sometimes gives them a little cold oatmeal porridge, or a few scalded grits, dusted over with barley meal. In cold, raw, or wet weather, we have found a little of the green of onions or chives, with curd, a very comforting and fortifying addition.

As in all other stock, breeding between relations is to be avoided; and though, to preserve special markings and peculiarities-take the Sebright bantams, for example, -you must breed in and in, great delicacy of constitution is the result.

We would advise none to keep fowls for the purpose of rearing chickens in situations where they cannot resort to the fields, and where their natural habits are interfered with.

The remark is often made, that chickens reared in the country by cottagers are more vigorous and healthy than those bred in the most expensive poultry houses: this I believe to be entirely owing to the more natural circumstances under which they are bronght up. Fresh air, fresh grass, and fresh ground for the hens to scratch in, far more than counterbalance the advantage of expensive diet and superior lodging, if these latter are unaccompanied with the more necessary circumstances just described.

The subject is far, very far from being exhausted; but, popular as it now is, there are other things in the world besides poultry; nor must we trespass farther upon pages that may be better occupied: we, therefore, for the present, refer our readers to Mr. Tegetmier's book.t There is more good sense and practical knowledge in that modest shilling's worth than in many a more voluminous treatise; and it is only necessary to say, that the illustrations are from the pencil of Harrison