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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 373.-12 JULY, 1851.

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3. Farming for Ladies; or, a Guide to the Poultryyard, the Dairy, and Piggery. By the Author of British Husbandry. 1844.

4. The Poultry-yard; a Practical View of the best Method of Selecting, Rearing, and Breeding the various Species of Domestic Fowl. By PETER BOSWELL. 1845.

5. Domestic Fowl; their Natural History, Breeding, Rearing, and General Management. By H. D. RICHARDSON. Dublin, 1846.

6. A Treatise on the Breeding, Rearing, and Fattening of Poultry. By JAMES MAIN, A. L. S. 4th Edition. 1847.

7. Ornamental, Aquatic, and Domestic Fowl, and Game Birds; their Importation, Breeding, Rearing, and General Management. By. J. J. NOLAN. Dublin, 1850.

Of all the branches of Natural History which relate to the inferior creatures, ornithology is perhaps the most elegant and the most interesting. It is true that some species among the beasts are endued with higher powers of intelligence, and are available for more general purposes of usefulness, than any birds, and therefore must be allowed to put forth the prior claim on the attention of the wise; but their range both of element and geographical space is more limited; there is less ideality about the mode of life they are constrained to adopt; they are rarely supplied with brilliant coloring, unless when, as in the baboons, it seems intended to make them still more odious; their voices are not such that man can eagerly listen to them with continuous pleasure; and though they display many amiable and attractive traits of character, still it may be said that with them what we should call the evil passions are fiercer and more predominant, while the softer graces of temper and disposition are displayed in less abundant measure than amongst the feathery tribes. They are, indeed, in some respects more nearly related to us;-the orang-otan at the Zoological Gardens, if suddenly converted into soapstone, would exactly correspond with the usual effigy of a Chinese mandarin. This is no recommendation; a certain amount of dissimilarity and inequality promotes friendship, and even love. But among the birds are to be found families whose decorations, alike graceful and gorgeous, are inimitable by any material that we are acquainted with, be it even gems and metals; whose song by its mere tone moves the listener almost to tears, although he is ignorant of the exact sentiment that inspires the melodist. Some, as the raven, are absolutely cosmopolitan in their dispersion throughout the climates of our planet. The four departments of material nature popularly styled elements seem open and accessible

CCCLXXIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXX. 4

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Nor are there wanting, to promote our sympathy, the qualities of acute perception, docility, mimicry, even fun and humor, courage, gallantry, strong affections-above all, parental love.

What community of feeling can we enter into with a fish?-a creature that increases its kind with little or no experience of the delights of mutual or parental affection;-brings forth by thousands and hundreds of thousands at a time;-eats its own progeny indiscriminately with those of its neigh bor, showing no favor to either, just as they are arriving at the most interesting stages of their youth-that indulges a voracious appetite without, as far as physiologists can judge, enjoying the pleasures of taste;-that dozes, indeed, now and then, but never seems to know what a comfortable night's rest is, though it may be torpid for a whole winter;-that has a chance, especially if it be cartilaginously constituted, of living for centuries, and yet is liable to be snapped up by its own greatgrandfather without a moment's warning! No; we cannot understand the life-theory and practice of these races, and probably never should, even were the depths of the ocean penetrated for our accommodation by a glass tunnel, through the transparent walls of which we might behold the meteoric ribbon-fishes glancing athwart their secret abyss, and practise an espionage upon the soles and turbots as they were sliding, unhurt by the enormous pressure, and unsuspicious of a Paul Pry, over the surface of the profoundest mud. Look into the eyes of many beasts and many birds, and there is something which you can understand, something which seems inclined to meet your thoughts half-way, if it could but find a common language; but the only thing which the eye of a fish ever appears to express is, "I would eat you if I could." The dervish who possessed the power of throwing his soul into other animals, might know tolerably well how to proceed when his transmigratory fancies led him to animate a bird or a beast; but on entering any of the finny tribes he would be utterly at a loss.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the sea hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

We would altogether decline the acquaintance of fish, so long as they are in the flesh. Afterwards.

it is all very well to have a levee of them waiting | collection, or the American floating treasuries of upon us at Blackwall, instead of our attending natural and artistic objects. And the price of Mr. them in less comfortable reaches of the estuary.

Sweet is the hum of bees, dire is the song of gnats and mosquitos; gaudy is the clothing of the butterfly, noisome the contact of vermin; costly are the products of the silkworm and the cochineal; ruinous the ravages of the weevil, the wireworm, and the locust. But in this favored country -and how few of us reflect on the blessings peculiar to our position-not least our ignorance of what either a hot or a cold climate really is!-in this physically happy land, compared with many other regions, insects exist in but a contemptible minority. We have fewer entomological beauties, and, Heaven be praised! fewer entomological plagues; whereas in ornithology we are rich beyond our fair proportion. It is true that we have, after all, plenty of insects even here; but the extreme minuteness and unimaginable variety and transformations of those creatures forbid the enterprise of most ordinary students; and when we have learned their forms, we cannot comprehend or even scarcely guess at their senses-their inner mode of life. It is doubtful whether they possess the faculty of hearing. An intelligent bee-master and a good gardener says that he fired a gun close to the hive containing a swarm; they only stirred slightly; but shaking them disturbs them much more than any noise." (Wighton on Bees, p. 59.) If they do hear at all, their scale of audible sounds has been conjectured to lie far at the top of ours, and so to be a nullity for our ears from the highest to the lowest note which it contains. The kind of sight that must be the result of looking out through a thousand microscopes is difficult for us to realize; the language of the antennæ is more untranslatable than any cuneiform inscription. For bees, and a few others of their class, there will ever be a genuine fellow-feeling, as well as a selfish interest arising from considerations of profit; but the mob of creeping things will secure no hold on popularity.

Gould's admirable works, such as "The Birds of Europe" and "The Birds of Australia"-the one 761. 8s., and the other something like 1201.-is against their purchase by most provincial libraries and book-clubs-quite as much as the cost of Mr. Yarrell's excellent "British Birds” and “British Fishes" stops their taking a place on the parlor shelves of many who would like to have such pleasant hand-books within reach. Still these last can be consulted at almost every literary institution in the kingdom, and plenty of cheaper and less comprehensive works are continually reprinted. For one great charm in natural history is, that it never wearies; it neither grows stale, nor is made the sport of fashion. Buffon is not yet wholly antiquated, though he has been one main cause of the building up the most startling theories from incorrect data; nor is Goldsmith's " Animated Nature" quite worn out, though he makes the common gander take his turn upon the nest. The literature of natural history never becomes entirely obsolete. The costumes, manners, politics and creeds of men may change, but still nature remains the same, reproducing successive examples of her own original types with perennial freshness. The forms and habits of the humbler animals are the first things to interest our childhood; and they often retain their hold upon our inquisitive attention after we have learned to regard the passions and intrigues of men with indifference—or, better, with pity.

So far as an acquaintance with outward forms is concerned, we have no high idea of the elementary instruction of museums. The stuffed specimens are often sadly distorted; the neck perhaps stretched to twice its natural length; on the parts not covered with feathers, we see unreproducible colors mocked by pigments that have faded since they were applied; false feathers are inserted, natural ones dyed; impossible attitudes assumed. It would be As to conchology, as seen in museums and cabi- unfair to criticize severely the artist who has to nets, what is it but a collection of husks and rinds mount the skin of a bird which he has never seen of things that are dead and gone? We treasure alive, and whose Habits he can only guess at; but the envelope, having lost the letter; the book is it may seem a curious paradox that figures drawn destroyed, and we preserve the binding. Not one from his stuffed specimens sometimes are found to person in a hundred, who decorates his apartment give a less false idea of the creatures themselves, with shells, can tell whether the living creatures when afterwards oculis subjecta fidelibus, than do they once contained had eyes or no eyes, were fixed the said specimens. We should, however, recolto the rock or drifted with the sea-weed, were lect that even so the engravings from certain mystic purely herbivorous, or, by an insinuating but un-pictures are less unintelligible to common beholders amiable process, dieted on the vitals of other mollusks their neighbors. The Radiata and the rest of their allied tribes are still less inviting to men and women in general, since they puzzle and worry even philosophers and practised naturalists. We believe that Mr. Charles Darwin has been for some time past engaged upon the barnacles, and has been well nigh driven to despair by the slipperiness of their character. So that we still return to our proposition, affirming the supreme attractions which ornithology has to offer. For what is a menagerie without the birds? What a farm-yard without the poultry? What a dinner without the winged game or their sufficient deputy?

than the pictures themselves had been in Trafalgar Square. The intermediate interpreter is instinctively biased towards natural truth.

Books, again, on the subject which each one most affects, will be sure to be read as fireside pastime. Knowledge is thus acquired, but a science is not thus advanced; information is spread, but the general stock is not increased. To do this, practice must aid us; ornithological work must be done; birds must be collected, and kept, and studied. Or, better than a collection-far better for those of moderate ambition than the possession of a large menagerie at once, is it to have a succession of individual specimens occupying But then, how to indulge a taste for ornithology? a leisurely attention, till the secrets are coaxed out In museums, or in books? Both, of course, are of them. An amateur who would thus keep but a useful; but the best of either, when most wanted few pairs of finches-for the plan of retaining only on the spur of the moment, are accessible to but single birds in captivity is alike cruel and unprofitfew. The large building which stands at the back able-and jot down from day to day their mode of of Montague Place and fronts nowhere, never trav-nesting, incubation, feeding their young, growth, els up and down the country like Mr. Wombwell's diet, notes, &c., little knows how valuable his con

tributions would be at the end of a few years; but especially if he made a change now and then-not too hastily-in the species of his captives. Books on natural history have been, in general, so apt to repeat each other in almost the same words, that the production of fresh information from original observers is sure at the present day of a warm welcome. But the misfortune is, that so many men of great acuteness and ample means have gone through various branches of experimental science for their own amusement—we may especially mention gardening and the rearing of birds and animals -and then, when certain conclusions have been arrived at, and their own minds satisfied, they have turned to some other pursuit without making any record of their former one, or leaving any addition to the capital of human knowledge, except the little that may survive by oral tradition amongst those who were about them at the time. Such favored individuals—favored both in fortune and in talents really ought to draw up some narrative of their labors at all events, communicate occasional notes to some journal of the day; but the pecuniary stimulus is absent-and the vis inertia is too much for any other. We have a few good energetic examples to the contrary in such men as Thomas Andrew Knight and Charles Waterton; but how brief is the account which Sir John Sebright has left in print of what cost him thousands of pounds and years of observation! Worse still, in how many cases has a man's acquired knowledge of natural facts all died away with him, and been lost forever! Is it not almost as bad as if Captain Cook, Bruce, Humboldt, and other great explorers of the world, after having penetrated into unknown regions, at the cost of money, health, and all but life, had forthwith cast into the fire every specimen, chart, drawing, log-book, and journal that they brought back with them?

So, then, the way to know birds is to see and to keep them; the mode of furthering a knowledge of them is to note what is seen. It is thus that the Zoological Society and their officers have made such immense advances during the last few years although the field is altogether too vast for their numbers, and their present powers to subdue at once there yet remains an enormous unreaped harvest. But every one cannot reside within a drive of the Regent's Park, nor, like Lord Derby or Sir Robert Heron, maintain a princely menagerie within his own domain. It must come to a few pets, more or less in number, according to people's means; three or four sorts of water-fowl in the pond, one or two of pheasants in the aviary, or a set of cages containing doves, finches, or parrots, as it may be.

A vast body of amateurs gratify their ornithological longings by keeping, under really adverse circumstances, families of choice poultry-in which term, if pigeons be included, a still larger multitude is embraced. These people are utterly distinct from the class who rear or fatten fowls simply for table purposes. With many it is really the pursuit of experimental knowledge under difficulties-with many it is all as truly for the disinterested pleasure of having and admiring the birds themselves, as the wealthiest reader of these pages would claim to be influenced by in keeping up his swans or his golden pheasants. Probably many a rich connoisseur would scarcely credit what narrow nooks, confined back-yards, close garrets, are converted into receptacles for a small stud of select cocks and hens. The eggs thus laid are valued as were they

the eggs of a phœnix; the chicks thus hatched are petted more than a first-born child; and the grown creatures themselves are loved and admired as incomparable, faultless-no one has so good, no one shall have, except as a proof of devoted friendship, or in exchange for some still more perfect specimen, if such can be; but to sell them!-Do people sell their own fathers and mothers?

It often happens that the passion is stronger than the means of gratifying it are possible. Many sorts may be hankered after—even possessed—and there may be tolerable room for but few; and need we say that one paved court of twenty feet square will not contain two dominant Chanticleers? So, various "lots" are billeted out at sundry isolated cottages, just as a sporting nobleman would disperse his greyhound pups amongst his farmers, or send his racers out on training. The owner has the joy of seeing them now and then; of hearing of them more frequently, just as he would demand news of a sick child that was gone from home for country air; of receiving occasional baskets of eggs and hampers of chickens, and distributing such produce; and of feeling conscious that he is the absolute, muchenvied lord of such and such unparalleled beauties. Their destiny awaits his nod—to remain hidden in the rural harem, where no other fancier "knows of them," or to display the full blaze of their fresh moult to the dazzled public at the next Midland Counties Agricultural exhibition. Fowls thus out on a visit are technically said to be "at walk;" and many cottagers make a good thing of taking in chickens to tend and dry nurse. Especial provision is made for this arrangement at poultry shows. At the Birmingham meeting, which promises to beif it is not already-the very first of the kind in the kingdom, one of the rules is" All the specimens must have been bonû fide the property of the exhibitor for at least two months previous to the exhibition, with the exception of chickens which may have been hatched within that time. A written declaration to this effect must be forwarded. Foul out at walk will, however, be equally admissible for exhibition by their real owners." An ardent poultry-fancier, lauding this system of confiding choice sorts to the care of cottagers, believes that he has made a discovery in the nice task of selecting the parties who are to be intrusted with such precious charges.

I employ (he writes) three turnpike-gates, and find it the best and safest course to pursue. There is always some one at home; and the outhouse where the fowls roost is so close to the dwelling that there is people sleep light, lest they should lose a sixpence. no fear of their being stolen; besides, I think gateMy usual plan is to find all the corn the fowls eat and buy the eggs. This keeps them (the people) honest; and when I send the eggs to a farm to be hatched, I give to the shepherd's wife, or to the servant who looks after them, 6d. per couple, for herself, for all reared.

Everybody knows that there is a fashionable world, a literary world, a sporting world, and a scientific world; but everybody does not know that there is a poultry world, with its jealousies, excitements, preeminences, and interests, just like any of the other worlds that revolve, "cycle on epicycle, orb on orb," in the midst of the great universal world itself. The grand evil is that the poultry world has hitherto been kept to a great degree distinct from the scientific world, to the disadvantage of both these respectable spheres. Not a few renowned naturalists have disdained in toto the

scrutiny of domesticated animals. They have too | from eating their own eggs. He has a golden pheas

hastily adopted a sweeping theory explanatory of their diversities, and thought that the study of their various forms would hardly repay the trouble.* Others, who would fain explore this entangled region, have been sorely hindered by the prevalence of mere commercial jealousies. The men who live by the propagation and sale of valuable beasts and birds have had their lips sealed by the dread, that, while they were communicating some natural fact, they might betray some precious secret; and so they have curdled themselves into close boroughs, and have often shut their gates on all inquiring savans-sometimes have sent them wandering hither and thither on a wild-goose chase. But these mischiefs will be overcome. The Poultry World desires and deserves to fraternize with the Natural History World-and we see many signs In like manner the secrets of the Fancy stand a great chance of being profaned by the rough handling of common sense. The establishment of the Zoological Society, and its consequences, have given a blow to the quackeries and mystifications of unblushing dealers, from which they can never recover, though they may writhe and struggle for a time with eel-like slipperiness and tenacity of life.

of success.

Our agricultural magazines and country newspapers are conducted by persons who have every opportunity for estimating the degree of interest felt as to particular subjects; and perhaps we could not better illustrate the strength of the under-current contemned by Dons of Science, than by giving from those journals a few specimens of the overtures made by the poultry public, entreating aid from those able to afford it. We shall, however, purposely refrain from adding the solutions of the problems proposed, as they will form an excellent examination paper, by which students may test the proficiency at which themselves and friends have arrived.

ant which lays regularly every other day, and devours
the egg as soon as it is dropped. She used to lay at
from five to six o'clock in the afternoon, but since he
has watched her closely she lays early in the morning.
She appears to lay eggs for the express purpose of
eating them.
V. A subscriber would be obliged if the editor could
suggest a simple and efficient cure or preventive for a
complaint in chickens six or eight weeks old, in which,
without any previous cause, they pine, separate from
their clutches, and, after lingering a few days, die.

The inquirer lately lost a fine Dorking cock under the following circumstances:-For the sake of a breed between the cock and a particular hen, it was necessary to shut them up together, and, the place of confinement being deficient in the means of ventilation, the cock in two or three days began to droop, and, though liberated, he was affected wich vertigo, and died in about a fortnight. He was repeatedly phys to be administered to him. The hen did not apparicked; and, as he could not feed himself, his food had

ently suffer.

VI. Sir-Last year I had a present made me of a couple of beautiful black grouse bantams. I have been so unfortunate as to lose the hen this spring, and I am fearful I shall likewise lose the cock, for he has lost the proud, haughty step so natural to the bantam tribe; his comb has turned to a dark dingy color; he has great difficulty in swallowing anything, however soft, having to make three or four attempts He is reduced almost to a skeleton. before he can.

If you could recommend anything which you think would be useful, I should feel very grateful.

EPSILON. N. B.-I have fed them generally on dry barley. I have tried a little rue and butter.

We may here remark, that advice respecting poultry ailments is very frequently asked by letter of the editors of agricultural papers. Were the enclosure of a handsome fee made by these gentlemen, as by the advertising doctors, a necessary preliminary to the medical reply, all honorable secrecy respecting the case being of course in like manner guaranteed, a decent income might be deWe would

I Sir-Will any of your correspondents inform me of the best mode of rearing pea-fowls? I have now a pea-hen sitting on nine eggs, and, having been hith-rived from this branch of practice. erto unsuccessful, not raising more than one in six, I

am rather anxious to have the advice of others.

J. F. E.

willingly undertake all the labor and anxiety for the receipt of half the profits. "Dum dolet-while the sore pinches, then," say the mediciners, "is II. W. C. will thank some one to inform him what the time to ask a fee." But gentlefolks, mourning size a piece of water must be to keep a swan on? over a declining hen, or longing to save the lives Also, whether a single swan will remain quietly? of a delicate brood of turkey-chicks, rarely enclose And whether swans will devour trout? He has a even the penny or two-penny stamp which is to carry small pond in which there are trcut, and the beauty of the water is entirely done away with by a nasty green scum, which he has been told a swan will

clear.

III. Sylvanus wishes to know if the guinea-fowl ever breeds with the barn-door fowl-as a friend of

his thinks that he has some hybrid chickens.

back the friendly hint. The gallinacian leech, like the mountebank of former days, has to exercise his wits for pure benevolence. And wits he need have, or some infallible specific equally sovereign for inflammation of the lungs and a broken bone. Most applicants suppose him to be a clairvoyant,

and remind one of the faith of the rustic who ran to the doctor and said, "Please, sir, my wife's very

may be doubted whether the petitioners are in earnest, or, under the shelter of an anonymous communication, impertinently seek to give trouble and annoyance.

IV. R. B. asks for some plan to prevent pheasants *Here is a sample:-Plusieurs autres races mitoy-bad; I'm come for some physic!" Sometimes it ennes, un plus grand nombre encore de variétés accidentelles, se trouvent dans cette tourbe immense des pigeons de volière. Les décrire, les connaître toutes, serait un ouvrage aussi ennuyeux pour l'auteur qu'il serait de peu d'utilité pour l'étude de la nature; ce n'est aussi qu'avec quelque dégoût que nous nous en occupons; on ne peut guère s'occuper de ces races dégradées, que d'après de simples suppositions, que l'on hasarde pour la plupart. Les soins de l'homme, en s'étendant sur la propagation et l'éducation des oiseaux, sont les causes premières que ceux-ci ne nous offrent plus que l'image d'un esclavage très ancien, dont nous remarquons toutes les traces dans l'altération de leurs qualités habituelles.-Temminck-Pigeons & Galliacées, i. 202.

VII. Sir-May I beg the favor of the opinion of one of your correspondents conversant with poultry, respecting a hen of mine, which appears to have fits at certain times, spinning round and round, and is only kept alive by being fed by hand. She will stand in the same spot for a length of time quite listlessly, and have tried castor oil and pepseems to pine away. percorns with temporary relief. I am told that it is apoplexy, and that it is incurable. Is that the case,

or is there any remedy? I presume its flesh would be unwholesome if killed? I am yours obediently-A COCKNEY.

Ought the physician here to keep his temper, or only his countenance? We hope the signature Boothed him; for certainly no class of poultry-keepers should more excite one's sympathies than the constant dwellers in large towns or their suburbs. We always enter heartily into their feelings; we cannot see them stretching out their arms to grasp a few rural recreations, and not long to afford them all possible aid. Here is a still more voracious citizen :

VIII. Sir, I am very partial to poultry; and, possessing but a mongrel stock, the whole of which, six hens and a cock, from some cause or other, do not return me more than half a dozen eggs per week as a set-off against their food, I am inclined, sir, from the opinion of some friends, to lay the fault at the age of the hens, with some other minor causes; and, being advised to procure a stock of young chickens for next year's laying and hatching, I am anxious to go to market with as much scientific information as I can lay in, to defend myself against the artful circumventings of the itinerant venders who frequent the market of Leadenhall, and who make easy prey of us cockney purchasers whenever they can find a fitting opportunity.

1. What breed are considered to be the best layers? How to know them?

2. Which are the best sitters? How to select

them?

3. To tell a youngish bird from an old one? 4. To tell a healthy from a sickly one?

for the article has been proved-we will now look a little at the quantity and quality of the supply. The public want poultry information; what poultry books have the public to read?

The number of such works-as witness even the

list at the head of this article-is considerable; but the whole of our gallinacian literature would be comprised within a very small compass if we ruthlessly ignored to use the slang of the day-that proportion which is merely a re-compiling and a re-stealing of goods compiled and stolen so often as to have become worn to shreds and tatters in passing from pilferer to thief. In most of our encycloingly well done-but, owing to the dislike among pædias the natural history department is exceedscientific writers of grappling with the teasing varieties of domesticated creatures, they have, in many cases, avowedly compiled their poultry articles, and done openly what the inferior pack commit without acknowledgment. In fact, Poultry and Plagiarism seem to be bound together by some mysterious relationship or mesmeric affinity, though what that may be we are not acute enough to guess, unless it is that they both begin with the same consonant-a circumstance which has been affirmed by high authority to constitute the only and sufficient connexion between modesty and merit. Nor is the alliance at all a recent one. The Romans were as bad as the French and English. For instance, Varro, lib. III. cap. xxx., tells us how an expert goosemaster would proceed in choosing his breeding-geese. The parallel instruction in Columella is at lib. VIII. cap. XIV.-where we find just enough

5. Do you advise nest-boxes on the ground or of amplification and alteration of phrase to deprive elevated?

6. Are chalk eggs of any use in these nests?

7. Proper number of hens to a cock?

the later scribe of all chance of the beneficial supposition that he had made a quotation and forgot to acknowledge it. He has followed his leader on

8. In a stock of eight or nine, would you vary the plenty more points. But in these passages we breeds?

9. Their general food?

10. As occasional luxuries?

11. Would you feed once or twice in a day-and at

have double classical authority for the two important facts-that the domestic goose will not sit on and that the gosling must be cautiously turned out any eggs except those which she herself has laid12. Proper way to elip wings without disfiguring? to pasture lest he break his neck by tugging indis13. As a general habit, do you consider an unlim-creetly at the tough herbage. A fact of a different ited range better than confinement?

what hours?

The limited range at the command of this virtuoso was about twelve feet square. We wonder whether or not he would enjoy the inspection of a real country farm on which a large head of poultry is kept. Let us hope that the little stud of fowls has by this time been satisfactorily selected; and that his cock-we approve his having but onemay prove courageous, and his hens prolific. Another anxious man writes thus:

IX. One of my hens generally produces eggs with two yolks in each shell. The yolks are quite distinct, and are in the nature of twins. Did any of your readers ever know any such egg produce two

chickens?

class to be gathered from them is, that geese, two thousand years back, were exactly what they are hodie: some parti-colored, supposed to be "mitigated" from the wild sort, and others white, which then, as by many now, were held in highest esteem as breeders. A few happy modern coincidences may be admired on reference to p. 141 of Boswell, and p. 47 of Main, wherein are sentences, nay paragraphs, running side by side with the most loving unanimity. The incubation of geese will be found treated in the same consenting manner at pp. 150-1 of Boswell-at p. 81 of Richardson, first editionat p. 260 of Waller B. Dickson-and at p. 82 of Main. It should perhaps edify us all to behold four of the genus irritabile harmonizing so comcutting the leaves of a newly-purchased book, to pletely; but, alas! many are rather annoyed, on have to call out, "Ah, ha! Here is the same old song which I paid for only a month ago! The outside of the organ is new, and the crank looks different, but the barrels are the same which I have heard play over and over again before!" Our own chief complaint, however, is that while these amiable compeers

I see in the poultry-list of Leadenhall market mention made of large Surrey fowls at 12s. per couple are these of any particular breed, or are they capons? What is the best mode of fattening young poultry? These are samples of the details which editors of what many will call humble prints are expected to give in illustration of a minor branch of a single department of knowledge. Truly, their brainboxes had need be furnished on a liberal scale. We feel tempted to extend the list of poultry problems, so as to make an even dozen of questions, but refrain. Enough has been produced to show that a thirst for they so very often depose without jarring to the a certain kind of knowledge exists; the demand thing which is not. Common report is, in this

in quaternion run Perpetual circle,

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