manifest, I have them shut up in the morning,
summer and winter, till eight o'clock. The
immediate consequence which follows upon their
early rising being hindered, is, that they become,
forthwith, fashionably late sitters up. Just as
though they understood that if they went to
bed at the early time they would have to endure
too many hours of rest, they remain out and
about to the latest possible moment. Even the
young birds quickly fall into the same routine.
And that this is not caused merely by a change
in their evening feeding-time, I have proved.
For, say that they have been accustomed at
midsummer to go to roost at half-past six, and
to be fed an hour earlier, and that, after their
hours are changed, I adhere to the old feeding
time, they still remain on the move till
about nine o'clock; of course, when I am not
experimenting, I feed them later, and then they
seem to lay in an extra quantity, to last them
during their protracted night. I may observe
that the change of hours never in the slightest
degree affects their health. Therefore, he who, out
of an idea that late hours are unwholesome for
his fowls, has suffered himself to be crowed up
terribly early, need not persevere in his self-sacrifice.

Among the faculties of fowls may be reckoned
a great sense of time. You may change their
feeding- hours, but they will very soon recognise
those hours, and the cock's crowing for his food
at the new hours becomes habitual and exact.
It is a great mistake to suppose that any cock
wakes up the maids for anybody's sake but his
own. He wants his breakfast: that is all.

Fowls have much memory. After my long
absences they know me again, and take food
from my hand as usual, though they shrink from
a stranger. Even chickens that I left very
young, do this. Fowls have also not only
memory of benefits, but acute memory of injuries.
I once struck, with a small stick, a combed
gentleman who was attacking a little dog of the
house; from that time, he has never taken
bread from my hand, as formerly.

Fowls are, to a good extent, teachable. My
two bantams, though free, have learned not to
come near the flower-beds before the house,
and to keep in a certain permitted part of the
garden. Fowls, almost against their natures,
may be trained to quiet, nor is it necessary, in
order to bring about this desirable end, to treat
them according to an old lady's recipe, in one
of Miss Edgeworth's stories:—that is, whip
them all round. One has only to sequestrate
them, when very noisy, in a back yard, and
Consequence, the great Teacher, makes them
afterwards quiet when in front. Cochin fowls
are, I believe, more intelligent, and, therefore,
more docile than common fowls. Although the
nature of the Cochin hen is to sit inconveniently
often, I cure mine of this habit by shutting the
sitters into a dark closet in the hen-house,
which I call the prison, and which is earthed at
the bottom. The contact of the cool ground,
and the absence of food (they have water at
discretion), soon takes away the sitting-fever,
and Cochins, unlike other fowls, will begin
laying again almost immediately after a fit of
sitting. But the curious part of the matter is,
that the hens who have been in the prison, get
such a dread of it, that sometimes it is only
necessary to show them the prison, in order to
cure them of spoiling the eggs of the others, by
constantly sitting on them. Then again, some
hens get so nervously anxious to show they are
not sitting, that they will rush out of a nest
cackling before they have laid their egg, to
make believe they have laid it. One wise old
hen, after she had laid, would never cease
cackling till my housekeeper had gone into the yard;
the hen would then gravely walk before her,
ascend the ladder to the nest, and stand at the top
cackling, as much as to say, "There is my egg!"

Fowls seem occasionally able to correct
themselves of unhealthy habits. I have in my
poultry-yard a hen, named Lola,

           which had got such a habit of stuffing,
That all the day long she was panting and puffing,

who actually got back her health by a sudden
turn to exercise and abstinence. Her state was
previously so bad, with bumble-foot, gout, and
symptoms of dropsy, that (two years ago) I
sent her to the cook to be killed, just after
many of her congeners had for similar symptoms
been despatched. She had been a favourite
hen, and I repented of my order to the cook in
time for a reprieve to take effect. Immediately
afterwards, the hen changed her idle ways to
active ways, and she is now in flourishing
condition. Every day she seems to prescribe to
herself a certain quantity of scratching in the
yard, and this profits her so well that her feet
are sound. Though eight years old, she is a
capital layer.

Hens through experience, as they get older,
get wiser. They become every year, while at
all capable, better mothers. A young sitting
hen is generally either giddy or over-earnest,
thereby addling her eggs by quitting them too
long, or injuring and perhaps killing herself by
never leaving them at all. On the other hand,
an experienced matron will sit close for the four
first and the four last days of her term—the
ticklish and important periods of incubation—
but will rise and eat and drink for about five
minutes during each of the intermediate days.
Then the good old hen knows all the cunning
receipts and traditional secrets of her race, how
to rear her chicks, how to guard them from
damp, when to call them under her wings,
&c.; while the silly young thing will be
frightened at the first cry of her brood—will,
perhaps (as one of my young fowls did), run
away and leave them, or in an agony of uneasy
maternity, kick and sprawl them to death.

Perhaps no point more clearly demonstrates
the mentality of fowls than their pining from
moral causes. One may say they require happiness,
certainly amusement, and a certain relish
in all they do, without which the best food and
lodging does not cause them to prosper. Fowls
fattened in coops would not eat unless crammed
(disgusting process!) by means of funnels made