quality, it produces that sleepiness which is so favourable to flesh formation, which is the reason why pig feeders are partial to it. The late Dr. Bellyse informed us that he gave his brown and blackbreasted reds, whose forefathers had won many a main at 4 lb. 10 oz., in the Cheshire and Lancashire cock-pits, no more fattening than four or five days upon bread and milk. We can testify to their fine pheasant flavour, and the unction with which he said, as he pointed to the old box full of "fair reputed silver spurs," side by side with the model greyhound on his writing table, "Three hundred pounds wouldn't have tempted my father to put the knife into one of these darlings, even when he was sending out a thousand chickens a year." Two-year old hens lay the best eggs for setting; and those from four-year old hens should never be used, as the chickens are invariably lacking in vigour. You can rear good, fair birds in March and April, but the best are generally hatched in the early part of May. Many fanciers will not try and rear any chickens, save bantams, after the first week in June. "Nature," they say, "denies any luck with them when hay time begins." We cannot commend the thrifty system of a Kentish farmer, who is recorded in The Gentleman's Magazine of the last century to have economised the hatching power of his hens by letting them sit for ten days, and allowing the heat of the dunghill to do the rest, while the hen was set afresh four or five times. Still there is often an immense deal of egg production wasted at clucking time. Hens are allowed to remain sitting for weeks on nest eggs, or perpetually bothering the layers and the future mothers by getting in beside them. Dipping them in water, or putting them in a coop with a cloth over it, are very tedious and useless processes, as the hen only nurses her desire to be "broody" by crouching down, and may go on for an indefinite time if she is of Cochin blood. Our plan has always been to have a low wire house running the whole length of the day yard, with a small pent house at one end to shelter them from rough nights. Hens not required to sit are slipped in through a little sliding panel, and supplied with a little corn and abundance of water. The sight of the other hens at liberty excites them, and instead of nursing their grief in solitude they are kept in exercise the whole day, walking backwards and forwards at the wires when they are not drinking, and in less than a week, if they are caged early, they begin laying again. Polish fowls have given way almost entirely before Houdan, Crêve Cœur, and La Flèche. "The Scottish Henwife" does not scruple to style Crêve Cœurs "the best table fowl in the world." They are also exceedingly hardy, and everlasting layers of large eggs; but so far John Bull has never been half so alive to their market merits as the French. Houdans hold their own as fine layers of eggs, which rarely fail in a setting, but they cluck late and lack size for the table. They are considered the Dorkings of France, and supply the markets of Paris to a great extent during the year. Still their English mission is more as a cross to improve laying—a talent in which the Dorking seems to be gradually on the wane. The La Flèche scarcely ever sit, but the demand for them has rather slackened of late, owing to the fact that the cocks seem very subject to die of apoplexy. For an epicure, nothing exceeds game fowl; but their comparatively small size and pugnacity has rather put them out of fashion, except for an occasional cross to get quality. A cock of the sort used to a halfbred Dorking and Golden Pencil makes a composite fowl, which for nice size, combined with fine plumage and gaiety, we have seldom seen excelled. Still it is so difficult to get the three sorts to blend exactly, that fanciers have not generally persevered. The fine sized eggs of the Spanish do not atone for its light flesh, on which, like the Alderney cow, high feeding makes little impression. It may be accepted as a general rule, that a breed which is light in the body and runs to leg, never crosses well. There seems to be a lack of affinity between it and other breeds, and crossed with a Dorking hen or cock the produce is too often a bad barn-door black. Brahma Pootras excel as mothers and as winter layers, and a first cross between them and the Dorking have been found very profitable. "Ne'er wants my table the health-cheering meal, From Dorking's roosts the feathered victims bleed," &c., are lines of no recent date, but the spirit of the fifth may be found in every English farmyard, though not in the white plumage to which Surrey is still true. Some of the thriftiest English henwives have crossed their "heavy greys" with a common Cochin, or, better still, a partridge Cochin cock, and done so with great success. The cross seems to bring extra vigour with it, as the hens not only sit more but lay more. They are also hardier in winter, and come to maturity a little quicker, and are decidedly better and quieter mothers. Their eggs are perhaps a trifle smaller and richer, but the May chickens, although they come to the same weight, and fetch their 10s. to 12s. a pair at Christmas, have not quite such a good colour when brought to table. For Dorkings in their perfection we must fall back on our recollections of an October day at Lady Holmesdale's, at Linton Park, VOL. I., N. S. 1868. P the year before her ladyship's sale. We must fancy ourselves once more at Maidstone, that head-centre of the Kentish hop-fields, in whose market the court gallants of another age, wearied with the formalities of maids of honour, are said to have flirted with the farmers' daughters, "ruddier than the cherry," of their own rich county, as they stood there with eggs, quails, and chickens for sale. Our way lies not by the great political battle-ground of Penenden Heath, but up some steep and weary purlieus, which never seem to end. About the fourth milestone we come to the lodge-gate of Linton Park, which is opened by a woman in a scarlet tunic and a snowwhite apron; and wending our way down the drive, whose elm, beech, and fir blend with occasional clumps of yellow gorse, which in a foxhunter's heart "has but one rival, and that is the vine," we reach the house of Mr. Martin, the poultry manager. He won many cups in the West with Spanish gamefowl and Silver Pencils, but in Kent his energies have had wider range. In 1853, her ladyship (then Lady Julia Cornwallis) began with a few Dorkings for house use, and gradually sent hens, with chequered success, to Maidstone and other bye-shows. Lady Holmesdale's original sort was from the strain of the Rev. T. Boys, who (like Sir John Sebright and Mr. Braddick with their Bantams) was a breeder of renown before Bingley Hall was built, or the "Scottish Henwife" had undertaken that sea journey in which the sight of a pen of Cochins on deck first inflamed her ardour. The Linton Dorkings were crossed with birds from the collections of Lady Louisa Thynne, the Hon. W. W. Vernon, the Rev. T. Down, and others, till a breed was attained which for size and dark plumage has hardly had its peer. While the Dorkings were coming to perfection, her ladyship was busy in the shows with Silver Spangles, which in their turn were superseded by Silver and Golden Pencils, and Spanish. We also found Brahmas, white Cochins, and Polish fowls, and a Golden-laced Bantam, the last of its clan, in and about the low straw hovel near the weeping ash in front of Mr. Martin's house. Old Viscount, the victorious Dorking, who had been like Wordsworth's Peter Bell "All along the lowlands fair And far as Aberdeen," and gathered ten prizes in his day, stood hard by, ruminating on his latter end. Another veteran, which had been second in a large field at Manchester, and had crossed the border to do battle with heroes from the Carse of Gowrie and many a Scottish henyard, had only one eye left wherewith to look on at the packing for future shows; while a noble Spanish was under gentle pressure for Birmingham. It was there that " Old Rose Comb" (a much revered memory at Linton Park) met and scattered eighty-nine cocks in that peaceful fray, where steel spurs and Sundleys and Gillivers-with a thumb-nail sharp as a talon to bring out "the last drop"-are happily unknown. From the commissariat stores we turn to the orchard dell, where the laundry stands, and which goes by the name of "France." We find it full of Spanish and Silver Pencil hens, which have borne their part over and over again in first-class pens; and then we stroll away round the outlying walks, which are each furnished with a house on rollers and a ventilated top, in the four hundred acres of park. These houses are under lock and key, and are moved very frequently. Silver Pencils destined for Birmingham are at the top of the park, and four and a-half brace of Golden Pencil cocks scurry away like noble savages at our approach among the Portugal laurels near the drive. They roost in the trees at night, and it is no very easy task to get hold of them at "the witching hour," so as to wash and prepare them for a show. Dorkings were quartered in the Church House field, and with a parting glimpse at the graveyard, where on some stones the survivors evidently hold themselves in more honour than the dead, we reach the coppice dedicated to the five buxom Dorkings which fanciers know so well. Punch was not far wrong when he bridled and saddled his fowls during the mania, as these beautiful Dorking matrons looked quite like weight carriers. Emerging from the coppice, and descending by a series of flower-beds and smoothmown terraces, we reach Foxes' Hole-walk, and are among the Spanish brigade; and then four Dorking cocks, coming full tilt to greet us, proclaim that another station is reached at South Lodge. One of the four had met with an accident, and our guide might well say with a sigh, that if he could have brought him to the post, he would have been a flyer. But evening draws on, and at Castle Pond the Silver Pencils are all gone aloft. The hero of nearly three dozen fights is pointed out to us, poising himself most amiably on a bough betweeen a brace of his chosen sultanas. He is from Mr. Archer's strain; but his day is over, and he is only "kept for the good he has done." The sort are very irritable and bad to clean, but their temper is bland by comparison with a son of "Old Rose Comb" a little further on. If he were a true-bred pugilist, he would be content to "walk round and show your muscle," but out he marches with his shoulders up, "boxing" all the way in the spirit, and making so unmistakably at your legs, that it is only when you are equally in earnest with your stick that he condescends to "a retreat for purely strategic purposes." Such a choleric captain in cock's feathers never crossed our path before. A great many of the Linton Park Dorkings have gone to Australia and the Cape of Good Hope; and at the sale of 1866 her ladyship parted with 114 of the breed for about 420%. The best cocks made 28 guineas and 16 guineas; and one gentleman, who proposed to devote 50l. to pullets and cockerills at from 30s. to 50s., beat a retreat without a single feather. The only failure at Linton Park has been in the Aylesbury ducks, as, owing perhaps to the soil, the bills will come yellow, and not of that pale white or flesh-coloured tint which Mr. Fowler can always get on his Prebendal Farm in the Vale. The bill should be like a woodcock's, coming away flat and broad from the head, and without any spots of black or yellow. As they get older, the bills will become cream-coloured, it may be from the action of the sun. At four months, with high feeding, the ducks will reach 6 lbs. or 7 lbs., and they are generally heaviest at a year before they begin to lay, when a really good duck will scale 8 lbs., and a drake a pound more. This sort is universal among "the duckers" of the Vale, who rear and feed all numbers from 500 to 3000 during the year. Their prime object is to rear them at Christmas time, so that they may be ready about St. Valentine's day, to take the place of game on the London tables. At seven weeks old they weigh 3 lbs., and fetch all prices, from 145. to 18s. The difficulty is to get hens to sit in December, and "the duckers," who scour the farm-houses of the Vale to find them, will pay as much as a crown for their hire. Both hens and ducks are generally kept on rather spare diet up to Michaelmas, and are then very highly forced. The ducklings are principally fed upon tallow greaves boiled and poured over barley meal, and sometimes they have boiled liver with chopped egg. Water they rarely see, except in a drinking-pan. As much as a ton of ducks will leave Aylesbury station in one day, the whole of them picked, but not drawn, and hence "the duckers" might well wonder that they got no mention at Halton Park from the Premier when he spoke of beef and corn and the other Vale delights. In Norfolk the system is quite different, as the ducklings are not forced by the cottagers who breed them, but sold to the hucksters who collect for Mr. Bagshaw and the other great dealers, about a month before the green-pea time sets in. They are generally guiltless of Aylesbury or Rouen blood, and of the small mixed brown and cinnamon sort. The ducklings come into the dealers' hands at about 3lbs., and after spending a week in the lean yard, and three |