caught in a shower of ink-drops; and a cock
and two Brahma Pootra hens. The rest were
ordinary Cochin Chinas.

"Look, my husband, at the cock with the
gross voice, and without any tail. Look, too,
at the wonderful red eggs which his hens have
laid," said a farmeress of my acquaintance.

"Yes, my wife, I have been looking at
him. Isn't he droll? Isn't he ugly?"

"Ugly!" said I. "He's the model of
beauty. If you only knew the sums that
have been paid for cocks and hens the like of
those!"

"How much?" asked madame, carelessly.
"I suppose they would sell for fifty sous
each."

"Fifty sous! You would make
amateurs faint to hear such words proceed
from your lips. I dare not tell you how
much they have sold for. You would treat
me as one of your labourers did the other
day, when I told him that the world was
round like an apple, and not flat like a plate.
You would not believe me."

"Tell me, tell me!" insisted the lady,
whose curiosity rose with my reluctance to
speak.

I whispered a sentence or two in her ear,
for fear of being overheard by the bystanders
and being turned out of the room as an
impudent impostor.

"Really? On your word of honour?"
she asked, incredulously.

"Really. Upon my word of honour," I
seriously replied.

"Tiens! my husband!" she said, seizing
firm hold of his arm, to make the announcement
the more impressive. "Monsieur tells
me, on his word of honour, that a fowl like
this has been sold in England for one
hundred sterling English pounds, and that many
other fowls have been acquired for prices not
much inferior."

The farmer looked hard at me, and said,
"Monsieur is not a liar, I know; although
monsieur is often a farcer; but if monsieur
gives his word of honour——" The shoulders
finished the sentence which the mouth had
begun.

"Only think, Louis," she continued, "for
one such fowl as this, we could have two or
three thousand plump young fowls. Wouldn't
your brother, the captain, be glad of them, to
put into his pot-à-feu before Sebastopol. And
our poor son André is almost sure to fall to
the conscription next year. If we had a
Cochin China cock, we could sell him, and
purchase a substitute with the money. The
life of a man is worth the price of a fowl!
I wish I had a Cochin China fowl!"

"Will you buy one cheap—for five hundred
francs? I dare say I can procure you one
from England, now that the market is a little
lowered."

"Do you think me ripe for the asylum,
monsieur?"

"My dear friend," said Louis to his wife in
an explanatory tone; "these English, you
know, are always eccentric."

"And so were the Dutch, when they went
mad after tulips;" I retorted. "And so were
the French when they prostrated themselves
before the Scotchman who blew the South Sea
bubble."

"True, true;" concluded Louis. "Those
follies have passed; and so will this."

Such was the poultry-show at Boulogne-
sur-Mer—which we travelled several leagues
out of our way to see—a small beginning
which may have pleasant results, with all the
greater probability now that the red heat of
enthusiasm is cooling down to a more
temperate degree. We should be sorry to be the
historians to record the utter decline and fall
of the fowl empire; and, perhaps, the
continent may sustain the fortunes which are
already beginning to fail in Great Britain.
An early attempt, like this, at Boulogne,
often gives no measure of ultimate
success. When six bunches of rhubarb were
taken to Covent Garden Market, as a venture,
and three of them were brought back unsold,
who would have dared to prognosticate the
acres devoted to cultivate, and the waggons
and horses employed to fetch, the stalks of
this plant to make tarts for the Londoners?
Who, seeing the disfavour with which seakale
was first received, would have ventured to
predict the place it now holds on the list of
vegetable delicacies?

Who would have thought that the poultry-
shows of the north of England, excited by the
breath of a popular book, would have grown
to their dimensions and importance of to-day?
—perhaps we ought to write—of yesterday?
And who will say what may not be the
consequence of these dozen cages of foreign fowl?
It is known that the French government
pays great attention to, and does all in its
power to encourage country pursuits; and that
if Europe were but once blessed with peace,
the energies of that great country would be
more devoted to agriculture than they can be
now. We know the sums that foreigners,
comparatively less wealthy than ourselves as
they are, will give to possess first-rate British
bulls, cows, horses, and swine, for breeding
purposes; and it is probable that if once
their eyes are opened and their taste awakened,
they will be equally anxious to acquire whatever
we have of good (and we have much that
is superior), in the shape of poultry. There is no
doubt that a market may be opened on the
continent for the sale of many specimens which we
can well spare now; because, with us, choice
sorts have increased and multiplied. If only as
a pocket question and a matter of interest, the
subject deserves a little attention. We might
take higher ground, and urge the value of
the international acquaintance and intimacy
which would result from the two nations
pursuing one and the same hobby. The Great
Exhibition at Paris, this year, will afford
innumerable opportunities to any who choose