southern states had been watching for the event, which they took to mean their political extinction. They probably overestimated the significance of it; but with a high degree of passion, in the forms of due deliberation, they proceeded to exercise what they conceived to be their right to secede. The Federals denied the claim, and called it rebellion. The war was fought to decide which were right. The two words, 'secession' and 'rebellion,' are still in use among those who wish to make a distinction between a legal and a treasonable proceeding. It is not necessary for us to enter upon a discussion of the difference between them. Time has, in effect, settled the question. Those who called it rebellion have been generous to those who rebelled. Those who called it secession have submitted to the Federal idea. The question will no longer serve a political purpose.

It is unlikely that the future will ever witness such another outbreak of separatist passion as that which occurred in 1860. Apart from the war which crushed, the constitutional amendments which smothered, and the decisions of the Supreme Court which condemned, that movement, there has grown up in the states themselves a public opinion which renders an appeal to State Rights for any mischievous purpose almost an impossibility. The facility with which amendments may be made in the state constitutions has been exemplified in a remarkable way during the last ten years. Between 1895 and 1903 284 constitutional amendments have been proposed in the various states; and of these 168 have been adopted. The cause of this amending activity is to be sought for in the distrust with which the people regard the state legislatures. The sessions of these bodies have been in many states limited to one in two years; and it has been arranged in Alabama to have a session only once every four years. The tendency to special legislation, to extravagant appropriations, and to submission to the power of corporations and the rule of the Boss,' has become so great as to alarm the public. The veto-power of the governors has been strengthened, not only as regards laws, but as regards appropriations. The rise of Grover Cleveland to popularity was largely due to his vigorous exercise of the veto-power in New York; and his exercise of that power as President, especially over

extravagant pension Bills, won him much support. The President has not now the power to veto an item in an appropriation Bill; he must veto the whole Bill or sign it as a whole. The state governors have more power in all but three states, Ohio, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. In 1861-5 the governors saved the Union: they may yet save the public revenues and public morality.

How, out of a situation so desperate and gloomy, rose the tremendous war-power which enabled the United States to subdue the South, preserve the Union, free the slaves, reconstruct the Federation, conciliate the disaffected, and resume once more the burden of the 'too vast orb of its fate,' with an ease which has won the admiration of the world, it is not in our power at present to narrate. The work has been accomplished; and the reunited nation has entered more and more deeply into the affairs of the world at large, by its commercial enterprise, its industrial activity, its recent acquisition of territory in what were once the dominions of Spain. We have shown how the older history has come to be written in terms of a loftier impartiality and good will. We have indicated how the history of its own Civil War has been written with less than the old bitterness. We may confidently assume that its future progress, and the history of that progress when written, will show the United States, in spite of the materialism which to some observers appears so dominant in its existing polity, to be one of the greatest forces of civilisation that the world has ever seen.

Art. V.-POULTRY-KEEPING AS A BUSINESS.

1. Our Poultry. By Harrison Weir. Two vols. London: Hutchinson, 1904.

2. The New Book of Poultry. By Lewis Wright. London: Cassell, 1902.

3. Poultry for the Table and Market versus Fancy Fowls. By W. B. Tegetmeier. London: Cox, 1898.

4. Poultry-keeping as an Industry for Farmers and Cottagers. By E. Brown, Secretary of the National Poultry Organisation Society. London: Arnold, 1904. 5. Poultry Management on a Farm: an Account of Three Year's Work, with Practical Results and Balance-sheets. By Walter Palmer, M.P. London: Constable, 1902. 6. Poultry-keeping on Farms and Small Holdings. By Sir Walter Gilbey. London: Vinton, 1904.

7. Paying Poultry. London, May 1902.

8. Utility Poultry Club Year-book and Register. Edited by B. W. Horne, 49 Gloucester Gardens, Hyde Park, W. 1904.

THERE is no subject upon which more nonsense has been talked and written than poultry-keeping. Public men in their speeches and public bodies and responsible journals in their equally well-meant attempts to encourage an 'infant industry' have united to prove it true once more that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Undoubtedly, what may be called the great poultryfarm myth owes its origin largely to the impressions made by the printed word. Even the books quoted at the head of this article are not all entirely guiltless of the offence of suggesting that there is money in methods of poultry-keeping which, as a matter of fact, are absolutely impracticable. The inexperienced cannot understand why, if six hens at the bottom of a kitchen-garden yield a profit, six hundred on an establishment wholly devoted to them should not produce a hundred times as much money. It seems incredible that half a dozen birds may answer admirably and six hundred prove ruinous.

The management of poultry looks simple enough. The rations needed are well known and scientifically calculated in cheap books; the necessary houses are supplied by a number of respectable firms; the methods of

hatching, rearing, fattening, and preparing for market can be learnt; and the stock is small in size, conveniently handled, comes quickly to maturity, and soon reproduces itself. If the cost of feeding a fowl need be no more than 1d. a week, and she may lay in a year two hundred eggs-some of which within twelve months will be turned into layers,' 'prime chickens,' 'fat capons,' or 'pedigree cockerels-how can a poultry-farm fail?

Money, it is argued, is being made out of poultry by cottagers and farmers' wives who know nothing of scientific methods, and still believe that eggs set on a Sunday or after sundown will not hatch, that ducks' eggs want an occasional floating in a pail of water in order to incubate properly, and that day-old chicks, if they are to survive, must be given a peppercorn apiece and have the horn on the tip of their beaks pulled off. If this be so, then surely success must wait on educated people who have taken a poultry course under one of the County Council technical education schemes or at an agricultural college, and are acquainted to some extent with Transatlantic methods, especially when they are ready to give all their attention to the business, on land exclusively devoted to poultry, and possess all the incubators, brooding-houses, hatching-boxes, recording-nests, green bone-cutters, corn-kibbling mills, patent cookers, and other paraphernalia of a 'poultry plant.'

When, in answer to this, it is positively declared-as we are able to declare-that poultry-farms do not pay, the invariable rejoinder is that there are hosts of them in existence, that they are to be seen in almost every parish, and that the immense business' done by the great American poultry-farms is well known. If there is no money in poultry-keeping, it is asked indignantly, how can all the manufacturers of poultry requisites get a living? how do the poultry papers keep going? and where do the countless advertisers of sittings of eggs and stock-birds obtain the means to carry on their business? What, again, makes possible the organisation of the six or seven hundred poultry-shows which are held in this country in a year-there were between eight and nine thousand birds exhibited at the Alexandra and Crystal Palace shows in November last-and how do the numerous clubs devoted to the interests of various

breeds of poultry continue to exist? Lastly, comes the point that even Cabinet ministers have laboured before rural and London audiences. Surely the fact that Great Britain annually imports nearly 7,000,000l. worth of eggs -a large proportion from the other end of Europe, from Canada, and from Morocco and Egypt-to say nothing of 1,200,000l. worth of dead poultry, shows that there is an opening for people in this country who have the advantage of producing eggs on the spot.

That there is a future before poultry-keeping in this country we thoroughly believe. The production of eggs and table-poultry, like that of honey, can be immensely extended. But this is possible on certain lines only. Happily the facts of the matter are being increasingly appreciated by the agricultural press and by poultrykeepers themselves. Nevertheless the ignorance that still prevails is lamentably great. The losses which are being made in poultry-farming ventures are so pitifulsome 90007. of savings have lately been dissipated within a short period by men known to the present writer-and the patronage of poultry-keeping by agricultural shows is so largely bestowed in the wrong way, that it is worth while to set out, for the benefit of those in a position to advise would-be poultry-farmers or agriculturists desirous of giving more attention to egg and table-bird production, what are the conditions in which poultry is alone capable of yielding a satisfactory financial return.

As a class, the most profitable hens in this country are the half-dozen kept by a cottager who has at his door a common or field where he is at liberty to let the birds run. The poultry are in robust health and pick up much of their own living; what food is given them consists chiefly of house scraps and garden waste, supplemented sometimes by gleanings. The individual per

formances of the birds as layers are well known; the best can be bred from; the house in which the poultry roost is a small, roughly-contrived structure on which the owner probably did not spend more than half a crown in cash; and the manure is put to good use in the garden. However little the man or his wife may get for eggs, and for the brood or two of chickens which they raise in a year, there must be a profit.