satisfactory results by dealing direct with shopkeepers, private customers, and London factors.

The development of poultry-keeping on farms largely depends on agriculturists recognising that the successful management of poultry, like that of sheep, dairy-cattle, horses, and arable land, calls for knowledge and experience. The farmer has the great advantage of being able to provide much of the food at small expense. Potatoes, swedes, mangolds, and clover play a larger part in the profitable feeding of poultry than is generally understood. The farmer has also constantly small quantities of second-rate or injured grain which can be advantageously utilised, and sometimes, perhaps, dead stock that can be boiled up to supply the animal food which poultry need if they are to do their best, while many incidentals of poultry-keeping cost him nothing that he need take account of. The manure deposited during the day-time on the fields, if the houses are frequently shifted, will also balance any rent that could be fairly charged against poultry, for it is unquestionable that, on arable and grass land alike, hens in reasonable numbers do nothing but good. The manure from the poultry-houses is also profitable. Each bird will drop in the night-time from a quarter to half a hundred-weight in a year; and this manure is valued by the consulting chemist of the Royal Agricultural Society at 21. a ton. Every year, too, enough grain is left on the stubbles to maintain the birds in perfect health and condition for two months. If the farmer keeps pure breeds, and obtains a local reputation as a producer of eggs in the season of the year when they are scarce, he will probably experience little difficulty in selling a fair number of stock-birds; while some eggs, which would otherwise not be worth more than a penny apiece, may fetch from 3s. 6d. to 5s. a dozen for sittings.

By using incubators and a brooding-house, or by buying broody hens and providing shelter for their chickens when hatched, he can, if found desirable, develope the early chicken or duckling trade, which is usually profitable if the birds are properly fatted and trussed and despatched to a good market. This, however, obviously depends, as we have said, not only on the locality, but also on knowledge and experience. Such knowledge may be obtained by sending a son or daughter to a

teaching centre, preferably a farm where poultry have been profitably kept for five years, or an agricultural college course on really practical lines. When the young man or young woman comes home, no large schemes should be indulged in. Mr Palmer, in his third year, valued his houses and appliances at 3501., and his stock at almost the same amount. These are large figures; and, when items in accounts reach such sums, it is easy to get beyond profitable working and to deceive oneself as to the true character of the trading. In the case of Mr Palmer's balance-sheet we are struck by the fact that, of the 2291. put down for food, only 441. worth was produced on the farm.

On farms where a doubt is expressed as to the ability of poultry to pay really well, it will usually be found that no attempt was made to produce a first-rate article either in eggs or table-birds. The day when profitable prices could be obtained from Smithfield or Leadenhall Market for second-class stuff has gone with the development of the continental railway service and the establishment of fast and cheap steamship lines. There were imported into this country from abroad, in the year 1903, 2,369,868,000 eggs, and 1,203,0867. worth of table-poultry. In other words, most of the eggs and poultry in the shops are foreign; and they are generally satisfactory articles at the price. Not a few housewives who imagine that their poulterers supply them with English birds, are undoubtedly furnished with Russian or other foreign or colonial poultry, not occasionally, but regularly. Nor is it easy to see that John Bull has any just cause of complaint, for this excellent food could not be produced here at the price he is willing to pay for it. There is, however, an opportunity for the British poultrykeeper. To send second-rate produce to market is only to reduce the price of foreign second-rate stuff and his own. But with the geographical advantage which he possesses, and which the foreigner is unable to take from him, he can, if so minded, furnish the market with the best quality of eggs and table-poultry, and make a profit.

An egg is no longer a 'new-laid' egg when more than three days old. It is impossible-though some farmers refuse to believe it-to hoodwink the trade on this subject. The size of the air-space in an egg, as discerned

when it is held before a strong light-the test is called candling-is an infallible criterion of age. Now, owing to the distance that foreign eggs have to travel, they cannot be on sale in the grocers' shops before they are roughly about the following ages:—

Nevertheless the highest priced eggs in the London wholesale market have been on some occasions not English, but French eggs. What is the reason? It is that English eggs, purporting to be of the same age as these best-quality French eggs, are not equally trustworthy, and that the supply is small and irregular.

'I can recall the names of several firms' (says Mr Newport, an egg merchant, in 'Paying Poultry') 'who used to work genuine English eggs, but now do not do so. I will guarantee that if I went into the stores of the ten largest brokers in London I should not find an egg of English origin. Why? The answer is, "Unreliable." People think that all foreign eggs are in a state of incipient rottenness, and that, no matter how old an English egg may be, foreigners are worse. That is decidedly not so. It has got to be quite a large trade to send the best quality foreign eggs out of London to be unpacked, repacked, and returned to London as new-laid. Could this be done if the foreign eggs were rotten?'

As to the small and irregular supplies of English eggs, 'Is there any man' (asks Mr Newport) 'who would undertake to book me a supply, all the year round, of ten thousand genuine English new-laids per week? And yet I could tomorrow morning order ten times ten thousand in each of the following-French, Austrian, Styrian, Russian, Hungarian, Galician, Danish, Italian, and Moroccan; and they would be delivered the following day.'

There is not an egg-broker doing the best class of trade who would not welcome supplies of really genuine English new-laids, especially if the producers of them would club together-as the National Poultry Organisation Society with its depôts is trying to get them to doso as to be in a position to despatch the goods in as large consignments as possible. There is hardly likely to be

any limit to the demand for years to come. It should be unnecessary to mention that eggs must be clean. Farm eggs are not always clean; and, as egg-shell is porous, a soiled egg is a tainted egg, whatever shopmen may pretend to the contrary. Another requirement of the wholesale trade is that the eggs shall be graded as to size, as foreign eggs are.

At present the number of English farms which set themselves to supply such a simply-obtained article as the new-laid, or not more than three-days-old egg, is regrettably small. As a rule the eggs are collected by a farm lad or labourer, who may put into his basket any find of eggs of uncertain age produced by a hen that has laid away, as well as eggs in the ordinary nests to which hens desirous of sitting may have had access. Now the composition of an egg changes so rapidly under incubation that, when it has been sat on for only twelve hours, the change may be detected by the naked eye on the egg being broken open. The eggs when collected may be kept a week, or in the hope of prices rising-a fortnight, or even three weeks before being marketed. The result is that thousands of farmers never get from their grocers or the wholesale trade, at the dearest time of year, more than a shilling for eight, while in the summer they have to accept a shilling for a score and sometimes two dozen. And the eggs are certainly not worth more.

What is possible in the production of the best eggs is also possible in the production of the best table-poultry. The best French table-poultry is excellent; but, as the dairy show and the Smithfield show exhibits prove, and the leading West-end poulterers agree in acknowledging, the best English poultry has no cause to fear comparison with it. But the production of the very best table-poultry, reared for fattening and killing at the proper season, and then properly fattened, properly starved, properly killed, properly trussed, properly cooled, and properly packed-all this needs careful learning and planning. Farmers' sons and daughters inclined to make a special study of poultry matters would do well to restrict themselves to producing a small quantity of the best eggs and the best poultry, instead of dreaming of vast schemes and spending large sums on 'poultry-plants.' This alone, as Mr Pickwick said of politics, comprises by itself a

difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude.' Incubators may come in time, and permanent brooding-houses may follow them; but if they are to lead to the production of something less than the very best table-bird and the very best brown egg-as large enterprises have a way of doing, if some American experience goes for anything -they cannot bring with them the financial results which those who invest in them are apt to expect.

The future of poultry-keeping in this country is to the intelligent farmer's intelligent daughter. There may be cases, as at Mr Palmer's farm, where it is profitable to devote the services of a man and a lad to poultry; but the average farmer, hampered as he is by the lack of fluid capital, will not readily contemplate the sinking of 3507. in apparatus and as much in stock. He will also be disposed to wait for the balance-sheet of more experiments, and of experiments extending over more than three years, made by tenant-farmers as well as by rich landowners, before he sees his way completely to resigning one of his sons to 'the hens.'

We have used the American phrase 'poultry-plants'; and a word on these enterprises is necessary. There is undoubtedly a great deal of misconception as to the average degree of success which has attended the operations of these establishments in the States. Our public has heard a great deal about the successes, but very little of the failures; and that there have been many big failures cannot be gainsaid. Some of the success which has been attained is due, no doubt, to the immense demand in America for 'broilers,' i.e. fowls sold so small that they could not be marketed in this country. There is also in the States a climate which enables the farmer, not only to crowd his stock indoors, to a degree which would have disastrous results in our milder temperature, but also to feed it heavily on cheap maize, which is regarded here as too fattening, and as creating yellow flesh, appreciated in the States but objectionable in English eyes. It should be added that many of the American 'poultry-plants' which succeed are obviously departments of considerable grain-farms. Without going the length of saying that it is impossible to repeat in this country, over a reasonable period, any of the successes which are said to have been attained by large poultry-plants