might be angry and do something to you. I
was so unreasonable, one afternoon, at five
minutes to five P.M., as to ask for a tumbler of
toddy, and I was rebuked with the intimation
that it was " tay-time." I tried the effect of
half-a-crown upon that Scotch steward; but he
would not relax in. the least. "Five minutes
afterwards he told me sharply that I had
"better take some greens," and I was afraid to
offend him, and took greens—though I can't
a-bear that form of vegetable.

There was one astonishing exception to the
Scotchness of everything on board this vessel
—there was no service on Sunday. We waited
for a bell to ring us to prayers; but it rang us
to hotch-potch and haunch of mutton. So we
passed a most un-Scottish Sabbath, travelling
and feasting. How is it that the Sabbatarians, so
strongly opposed to the trains, have overlooked
the steam-boats?

Another night upon the waters, and when I
wake in the morning, and look through the port–hole
of my cabin, my eyes rest upon the granite
towers and spires of Aberdeen, glittering under
the sun, like a city of crystal. How eager I was
to leave them; how joyful I am to see them
.once again! Yonder rise the white towers of
my Alma Mater. I remember with what a
sense of relief I broke from her apron-strings.
I am going back now, to weep over her grave.
The flag is run up from the ship, and is
answered from the shore, we bound over the
bar, run along side the quay, and the next
instant my foot is on my native heath, though my
name (I am bound to add) is not MacGregor.

PERPETUAL POULTRY.

A PASSENGER by the London, Chatham, and
Dover Railway (unlimited), if he looks out at the
right window of the carriage at the right time,
may see a bran new board perched up in a field
near Bromley, with the inscription NATIONAL
POULTRY COMPANY. Near it, are some new
buildings, chiefly a very long narrow shed with
a glass roof, something like a greenhouse with
a strip of garden by the side.

This is the first instalment, the letter A, of a
scheme which (let us suppose, as a pleasant
guess) is to supply us all with poultry and eggs
on the shortest notice and the most reasonable
terms. Beeves and muttons are at a premium,
and we must either pay high, or dispense with
butcher's meat.

What can we do in the poultry line, some
people ask, in this emergency? Can poultry be
made nearly as cheap as mutton and beef?
A hen thinks nothing of laying a hundred eggs
in a year; and as each egg contains within it,
what Dr. Johnson would have called the potentiality
of a chicken, it looks like a power in every
hen to supply us with a large amount of excellent
food. Or, if we desiderate eggs as well as
chickens, we can dispense with the incubation,
and consign some of the eggs at once to
the cook. But this, like most other good things in
money is concerned, depends on the ratio
of prices, or the ratio between the cost of the
food for the fowls and the price obtained for the
produce.

The French have the credit of understanding
this matter better than we. After having
supplied all their own wants (they eat much more
poultry and eggs than the English), they sell us
nearly a million eggs per day (last year the
import was three hundred and forty millions,
mostly from France). Many reasons have been
assigned for this; but the chief is, that French
farms being smaller than English, large grazing
operations are not so successfully adopted, and
there is more facility as well as more time to
attend to what may be called domestic farming,
or the rearing of the smaller animals. Then the
farmers' wives and daughters are not so stylish,
not so much given to pianofortes and silks, as
the farmers' wives and daughters in our own
country; they do more in the farm-yard, piggery,
poultry-yard, and dairy. Moreover, a poor light
loose soil is better for poultry than richer land;
and perhaps we may take the liberty of supposing
that French soil is, on an average, less rich than
that of English. Be all this as it may, however,
the French pay more attention to poultry,
and the accessories of poultry, than we do. If it
be true, as some allege, that our neighbours make
away with four thousand millions of eggs every
year, this would give a hundred eggs or so
to every French man, woman, boy, girl, and
baby, all round; and we can only say that we
envy them. In Ireland there are egg-runners,
boys who run or walk many miles every day,
buying up the eggs from the peasantry, taking
them to a dealer, and receiving so much per
hundred for their trouble.

Poultry fanciers are not poultry farmers,
seeing that they look more for praises and
prizes on account of the beauty of the animals
than for commercial profit in the market. They
can tell you about the merits and demerits of
all the several breeds of fowls:—Dorkings,
Bredas, Cochin-Chinas, Shanghaes, Spanish,
Minorcas, Normandies, Creve Coeurs, Brahma
pootras, Bruges, Chittagongs, Hamburgs, Polands,
Russians, Anconas, Rangoons, Malay, Brazilian,
and the rest. They can tell you that
the common barn-door fowl is a sort of scamp
or Bohemian, of no breed in particular, but
a good useful fellow nevertheless; that the
bantam is a pretty little chap of a pound
weight or so, liked rather for his pluck and his
prettiness, than for his poultry value; that the
silky fowl is next larger than the bantam,
weighing perhaps a pound and a half or two
pounds; that the game fowl, cock and hen
alike, are too fond of fighting to be peaceful
poultry; that the Hamburg hen is a prime
favourite, presenting her owner with two
hundred eggs or more in a year; that, take them
all in all, fowls present a medium weight of
from five to seven pounds each, and that their
eggs vary from one and a half to two and
three–quarter ounces each. Then, besides the
gallinaceous kinds, there are others—turkeys,