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5, 1863.] way, has a better chance of a good profit on her industry than the majority of her half-million competitors,—and a far better chance than almost any other ladies who have to look round them for a way of getting their bread.

It is not from the butter only, nor chiefly, that the profit should come, even reckoning with it the cream-cheeses which are so easy to make, and for which there is such a demand in town and country throughout the summer. Other products go naturally with those of the dairy; and some of them are at least as profitable.

There are the pigs which one finds in connection with every considerable dairy. These first occur in one’s mind’s picture of the establishment: but there is still a good deal of argument going on among farmers about the profitableness of a piggery. The doubt cannot but suggest suspicions of bad management as long as our imports show that we buy from abroad lard to the value of 900,000l.; and bacon and hams (besides salt pork) to the value of a million and a quarter, or 516,000 cwts. The truth seems to be that nothing produced on the land depends more on intelligence and care than the pig element of the farm. No animal is more certainly and irreparably injured by neglect, and none is so despised when injured, as the pig; and, as far as my observation goes, none is more sure to pay if well treated, in life and afterwards.

If our intelligent dairy-mistress keeps pigs in due proportion to her dairy, and knows the importance of their being of a good stock, and always clean and well-fed, she will find that the public has an instinct for these things, too. When she has attained perfection in her curing of hams and bacon, she will have as much custom as she can manage, for them as well as for the little delicate sucking pigs on her stall in the market, and the well-raised wholesome pork and sausages, and the bladders of lard which she may exhibit there. As to the hams and bacon, she will not have to send them to market, as they will be all bespoken before they are ready.

This is not all, yet. The marvel and mystery of our importation of eggs and poultry from the continent are as great as they were ten years ago. We are always saying, all over the country, that we cannot conceive why we do not raise fowls enough to supply our own needs,—seeing how cheaply they may be managed, and how little trouble they give. It used to be supposed that every cottager on any common, or in any lane, had fowls stepping and picking about his gable-end; and it has been considered an evidence of the dullness of the labouring class in the rural districts that they have not extended their poultry-rearing as the demand from the towns increased. We see fowls swarming in every farm-yard, and round the maltster’s and distiller’s granaries; and here and there we hear of an establishment for the rearing of poultry alone; but the wants of the population are very far indeed from being met. Even if we raised fowls enough to supply the tables of the gentry as at present, we should have to ask why other people should not eat poultry, as well as the gentry. If there was poultry enough raised, every cottager in the country, and every town-labourer, might as well have a fowl for his dinner as a rasher of bacon. The high price is altogether artificial, as any traveller in a variety of countries can tell. It is the scarcity which makes the high prices; and it is the desultory and unprogressive way in which the rearing of fowls is managed which makes the profits of that department so precarious as we are assured they are. The experience of foreigners justifies us in this conclusion.

What a fact it is that we have not only not eggs enough for the very limited use we make of them in our cookery, but are importing them to the value of more than half a million of pounds sterling a-year. In the last table of imports, the number for 1861 stands as 203,313,300. I do not forget that eggs are largely used for some of our manufactures; but that does not affect the question why they are not produced at home. Upwards of two hundred millions of eggs produced for us by foreigners, while Englishwomen are wanting employment at home! Surely this is a mistake which must soon be rectified!

The thing is, we have not studied the art of poultry-rearing as foreigners have, and as we ought to have done long ago. Even at this day, I am occasionally asked whether I believe in the possibility of regularly inducing hens to lay all the year round; and even whether it is possible to obtain a succession of eggs through the four seasons. Such points should not be left for foreigners to answer at this time of day. And how do they answer them?

They tell us (what we surely might have found out for ourselves) the reason why only a certain proportion of poultry will thrive of their own accord, in farmyards and round cottages. It is because poultry require animal food; and when they have consumed all the insects within their range, they will thrive no more unless we help them. The hens stop laying in winter because the insects disappear: but wherever they are supplied with animal food, they lay as well in winter as in summer. Some of my readers may have heard of the fortune made by a clever Frenchman who has made use of this fact to his own enormous profit. This M. de Sora, living a few miles from Paris, thought he would try what he could make of his hens by feeding them with horseflesh, which he could obtain of perfectly good quality very cheap. As Frenchmen themselves find horseflesh one of the best of meats, and stand up for it by entering into an association for the extension of “hippophagy,” there is nothing wonderful in the proposal to feed hens with a meat certainly not mere offensive to our prejudices than the insects on which our poultry feed. M. de Sora began with only 300 hens, and they actually averaged twenty-five dozens of eggs daily for the first year. He now has 100,000 hens, with a due proportion of cocks; and the preparations for feeding them and the management employ a hundred persons, of whom the greater number are women, engaged in the care of the fowls. The men are wanted for the slaying and disposing of the twenty-two horses per day required by the poultry. These horses cost less than nothing. Being old or damaged (not diseased), they are had cheap; and the sale of all parts of them, from the hide which goes to