Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/649

Rh great fan of feathers. It was evidently done through a mistaken notion of the object tested, but it hurt the victim's pride terribly to have such liberty taken with his person. Down came his tail, and he walked off in injured dignity, conscious that he had been involved in something ridiculous.

A disappointed barn-yard fowl is often as cross as if it could show its temper after the manner of human beings. The big dominique rooster that smashed the looking-glass was a very good-natured fellow with hens and young chickens, and he seldom resented having kernels of corn, no matter how many, snatched out from under his beak, when it was done in a fair scramble. But if he had begun to crow, and a kernel was unexpectedly dropped where he certainly would have got it, had he not been so busy, it was too much to see his share taken away by any other fowl. He frequently pecked the offender as soon as he could stop crowing, and showed general ill-temper for a few moments. His indignation was so amusing, that we fell into the habit of teasing him in this way, until, at last, the old fellow began to practice choking down the rest of his crow when corn was thrown in front of him. Gradually he managed to stop more and more quickly, and in the end he would swallow his voice with a gulp, and snatch a bit of food as promptly as if he had not been crowing at all.

A half-brother of this rooster learned very quickly to crow for corn, once for every kernel. He used to stand before us and crow as regularly as clock-work, always stopping for his reward, and never expecting a second kernel until he had crowed again. When almost satisfied, he waited much longer between times, and at last walked contentedly away. A black hen once showed almost equal intelligence in learning, not how to get food but how to be relieved of some which she could not help carrying around on her feathers. In the barbarous eagerness of boys to bring about fights, we often daubed old hens that held high rank and had many discontented subjects, with mud or anything else which would disguise them. On one occasion we dyed a speckled cock red with carpet-dye, glued a stiff, high comb of paper on his frost-amputated stump, and tied up his wattles under his throat. This overdid the business to such an extent that the other roosters fled from him in horror, as if he had been a hawk, and the Devonshire farm-hand, looking at him in amazement, exclaimed, "Byes, what fresh bird have ye brought about here?" Mud failed on the black hen in question, and we tried common paste, never thinking of one result—it turned the poor hen's feathers back, like those of a frizzled fowl—and, after we had done our best to wash the paste off, she was still in a sad plight. Many of her inferiors whipped her badly, and at last she became broken in