RECORD OF LAYING OF NINE INDIAN RUNNER DUCKS.

(Hatched 16th November, 1897.)

The nine young ducks hatched August have laid 753 eggs for the first five months of this year.

FOWLS IN CONFINEMENT.

OVERFEEDING and lice are the two causes of most disasters to poultry, and as neither of them are diseases, poultrymen are to blame for all the many consequences that follow upon their heels. Poultry in confinement must be fed differently from those which have a free run of grass or woodland, in which latter they revel, hunting over all the leaves, and scratching away, around and under old logs, for their favourite grubs and bugs. If you have not made it a business to watch your hens and chicks carefully you do not realise what a large amount of grass and green food they will eat in a day, when it is at hand, and when they have not been overfed with grain or scraps, and this is not all, as hens need rough food or something that gives bulk as well as nutriment. Even though you feed the confined birds the same identical food they obtained for themselves on a good run it would not be the same, as they would still lack the exercise so necessary for their health, and, therefore, in confinement, the same food would be too much for them. This is why successful raisers of poultry in confinement always throw the grain to their fowls in straw, thus compelling them to work for it; also hanging a cabbage-head just out of standing reach, so that they must jump for every pick at it. This is a good system, and exercise is necessary for their health, but if the food was composed more of nitrogenous elements, and less of the carbonaceous (especially of the oils and fats), there would not be so much necessity for this constant training down process, less over fat hens which stop laying and want to set, less

sluggishness in the yards, and more fertility in the eggs. There are still people in this enlightened age who stuff their chickens, both old and young. Now corn is useful in the poultry business, as lard or bacon is in the kitchen, but not as a regular diet. If you want to fatten poultry or warm them in cold snapping weather in winter, or when a hen is poor and on that account not laying, and needs a little help, &c., corn is just the thing, and the yellower the better; but as a general diet it is about as bad a thing as you can give, especially when fowls are confined.-Vermont Farm Journal.

FLAVOUR IN EGGS.

How does it happen that often a cook finds that more eggs are required this week for certain dishes than were required last week? The cause of this is, or should be, well known to poultry breeders. It all lies in the feeding, on which much of the flavour of the egg depends. In some backyards of the city and suburbs there are poultry which rarely taste any grain. They are fed mainly on the waste scraps of meat and vegetables and bread. Now, examine the yolk of an egg, the layer of which has been fed exclusively on meat, and compare it with that of a hen which has plenty of milk fed to it. The yolk of the first is dark in colour, and the flavour is too strong for people with a delicate palate. The milk-produced yolk is very pale in colour, the white looks milky, and the texture soft, whilst the flavour is insipid, and the eggs are of far less value for culinary purposes than those laid by fowls fed on a mixed diet of corn and greenstuff. Hens require a considerable amount of food to enable them to bear the strain of laying an egg every day. Still they should not be neither stuffed to repletion nor half-starved. Many young amateurs feed too much to the detriment of the egg-basket. The best way is to give plenty of greenstuff such as thistles, lettuce, cabbage, &c., and then let them have all the grain they are willing to scratch for. Hens should always be made to work for their living. If grain is scattered in a dry manure heap, in the farmyard, searching for it will give them profitable and healthy employment.

POULTRY NOTES.

TO TELL AN OLD FOWL FROM A YOUNG HEN.

IN lifting up the wing, and pushing aside the feathers of the sides, you will find in the case of a young hen a long down, light and close, arranged regularity between the other feathers which cover these parts of the body. Through the skin, which is of a delicate and rosy tissue, the very small blue veins will be apparent. In a hen more than a year old, the down and the veins will have disappeared, the skin is of dull white, and dry, less smooth, and somewhat farinaceous looking. The smooth leg, with bright scales, is also one of the best indications.

Give lime for growth of bone and for egg-shell material.

A little cayenne pepper in the food often stimulates laying.

A laying hen should have her food and drink at regular intervals.

If the hens show an inclination to pull feathers, give them salt pork. It is essential that confined fowls be supplied with plenty of gravel. Intelligent management and feeding are as necessary with chickens as with other stock.

PRINCIPLES OF CHICKEN RAISING.

The fundamental principles of raising chickens are judicious feeding, good housing, with plenty of fresh air and exercise to induce development. Under no circumstances will they stand coddling, nor must they be considered delicate because they are young and small. If from healthy stock, they will when hatched be strong and active; it remains with the breeder to keep them so.Country Gentleman (Albany, New York).

FEEDING FOWLS.

Touching on maize, how common it is still to see the farmer's wife keep on day after day, year in and year out, feeding nothing except this to her poultry. No greater mistake can be made than this. Maize alone is neither good for the laying hen or fattening bird, and we would strongly advise those. so persistent in its use to desist. Don't by any means stop feeding maize altogether, as this also would be a mistake, as it is a cheap and valuable food. Feed it in conjunction with other grain, such as wheat, barley, and oats, according to price. It is best not to mix different sorts of corn together, but feed them each alternately-say, one one day, and another the next. Fowls are usually passionately fond of maize, and will pick it out first, and perhaps leave the rest, if a mixture be given. Laying hens fed solely on maize go off in their yield, as the egg organs are very liable to become fatted up by this food.

The Orchard.

SOUTH AFRICAN FRUIT.

MR. D. O'CONNOR, Duporth, Oxley, forwards us the following extract from the Spectator on the subject of the British imports of fruit from South Africa. A perusal of the article should afford much encouragement to our Queensland fruit-growers, aided as they are in their work by expert advice:

Queenslanders in general, and fruit-growers in particular, are greatly indebted to the Agricultural Department for their enterprise and generosity in helping to instruct our orchardists in the production of good fruit. The various climates and soils of our colony are capable of producing in excellence nearly every known fruit. Our markets already show improvement in the quality and abundance of Queensland fruits, but there is still great room for improvement. Too many inferior trees are allowed to encumber the ground; these should be eradicated and replaced, after the ground is properly prepared, by the finest kinds procurable. It is useless to export inferior fruit; the best alone will pay. The enclosed extract from the Spectator should give some encouragement to our growers. When on a visit to the Cape some time ago, I was surprised at the high quality of the fruit, especially the apricots, grapes, and peaches. The Spectator's encomiums are quite justified.

During the last month (April) connoisseurs in fruit have had the opportunity of enjoying what is to most a new luxury. This is the finest fruit of Cape Colony, some of which has been placed upon the London market. There are still great difficulties in the way of its transport, as freezing destroys it, and the maintenance of a cold chamber at a proper temperature gives more trouble than the steamship companies like. But what does arrive in good condition is incomparably good. The large heart-shaped plum as full of juice as a peach, apricots with a double share of apricot flavour, peaches without a suspicion of the bitterness of Californian peaches and Williams' Bon Chrétien pears, are the most prized varieties. There are also three kinds of grapes, small black cluster grapes; and two large varieties, with Muscat flavour, one black and the other white, all grown out of doors, but not inferior to English hot-house grapes.

The Cape has a great advantage over California for profitable fruit-growing. Its seasons are the converse of ours. While we are freezing, the South African sun is ripening the orchards and vineyards of the Old Colony. Nature does so much for the Cape farmers that we wonder that they have not done more for themselves. The perfect climate produces the fruit of a flavour unsurpassed in quality, and in quantities as great as Nature almost unassisted will grant. In January, when dessert on English dinner-tables is supplied

mainly by the dried fruits-the raisins of California ripened in the previous summer, dried plums from Bosnia, or dried figs from Ionia, with only the orange and expensive hot-house grapes to give juice and lusciousness-the colonists are picking the last of the strawberries and apricots for themselves, and making ready for sale or export exactly the kinds which those who are compelled to eat dried fruit here and in the United States would welcome most eagerly. Early grapes, exquisitely flavoured pears, early peaches, fresh figs, plums of a size and flavour surpassing any grown in this country except in the hottest summers, are ripening on the trees of the "Old Colony." February at the Cape produces the finest kinds of English peaches and nectarines, mainly of the late-ripening varieties, which are, as a rule, the very best in flavour, even of those choice fruits. The difference is that what can only be grown in perfection under glass here, or under exceptionally sunny walls in favourable seasons, is there produced in abundance on standard trees. This fruit can be in London within a month of being gathered, and packed in cold chambers is brought here with the bloom still on the plums, which look and taste as fresh as if gathered in the garden. This is at a time when the east wind is whistling through the trees, and not a bud has yet appeared on our own plum and peach trees. It is in February, also, that the Cape grapes come to perfection, and have the best and truest flavour. Of these the Colony produces one kind in rude abundance, and does produce a few, and might produce a great quantity, of very high quality. Wine-making is an ancient industry at the Cape, and the most remarkable thing about the Cape Colonist's wine is that, though it has never been properly managed or developed, the growers have always succeeded in producing one wine of high quality. This is the Constantia, which has in it the guarantee, which no one seems ever quite to have accepted, that the Cape climate can bring to absolute perfection the essential vinous constituents of the grape, which no other country is quite known to do except the port-wine growing district of Portugal. Roasting sun, good soil, and something else, probably a very dry, pure air, do this, and there always has been a district of the Old Colony where these natural qualities of soil and climate were so far appreciated as to make vineyard planting a staple industry. But it is one thing to grow grapes for wine, and another to grow them for the table. At the present moment there are tons of little black vineyard grapes arriving from the Cape. Their condition and taste are an objectlesson both as to what the Cape can do and what it might do. These are of first-rate flavour, but of all sizes, unthinned, crowded on the clusters, with many half-ripe inside the bunches. They are, however, pleasant to taste, and remind the buyer of the days of vintage abroad. Their flavour is also evidence of how excellent they might be, if properly pruned and thinned. Later, in April, very fine white, or rather green, grapes, grown well and carefully packed, come from the Cape. They are of medium size, of a beautiful clear green like chrysoprase. The flavour is not that of Muscat, but is excellent of its kind.

For early winter fruit the Cape also contributes varieties which are most welcome at that season. Figs ripen in November, and there is practically an unlimited market for fresh figs in London. The Cape colonists are anxious to develop a business in dried figs, so that they may rival Smyrna. The Karoo is looked upon as the future centre of fig-growing and drying. It is intended to introduce the fig-insect which assists in bringing the Smyrna figs to perfection. But we think that before this industry is developed the trade in fresh figs will be so large as to repay the growers. The price in this country, even in the natural season, is so high that there would be an immense margin for profit if they were offered here in December. In early winter Cape strawberries and apricots are, in season together, the former being in perfection in November, while the latter last all through December. It is maintained that these Cape apricots are, without exception, the best in the world. We have tried them both fresh, as delivered here, and preserved, and this experience, limited necessarily to a few cases, entirely bears out the claim made for the fruit. It is incomparable. Loquats in October and Cape gooseberries, a wild variety, which in

the form of preserves is almost the best confiture in the world, make up the list of the best Cape fruits, and we have no hesitation in saying that these, when properly cultivated and of good varieties, are some 25 per cent. better than any other, except certain varieties grown in England and Western Europe under glass. It is worth remembering also that in addition to the happy accident of the Cape autumn occurring at a season which enables its fruits to be sent here in winter and early spring, there are differences of season in the colony itself. The first plateau, which runs all round the coast, produces its crop at an interval from that on the second plateau, while the roasting heat and drought of the western province cause a different season for the crop from that in which the table grapes ripen in the east, where there are rains in November and February.

Nor are the Cape growers handicapped, as are those in the West Indies, by want of adequate steam service or easily reached markets. The huge increment of wealth in the goldfields has caused passenger lines to increase their steamers in number, size, and accommodation. These steamers, meant to carry those enriched by the goldfields, or those who in hope of being rich are careless of expenditure, are the ideal vessels for fruit transport-speedy, roomy, and furnished with ample cold storage. Yet Cape fruit, except the little black grapes, is very dear. It is still a costly luxury, not a popular delicacy. The Japanese plums grown in South Africa were, in May, selling at 1s. apiece in Covent Garden, Cape peaches were 1s. 6d. each, and pears 8d. The quality of all three kinds was perfect, but they could only be regarded as specimen fruit. While the crop remains dear and uncertain, it is not strange that little Cape fruit is yet imported, compared with the demand. The blame lies entirely at the doors of the growers themselves. Their Government is endeavouring to awaken Afrikander opinion on the subject. They need teaching that only the best fruit is wanted here; that this must be carefully sorted, beautifully packed, so that in the package the fruit looks like a piece of decoration, or, at least, as fresh as when plucked; and that then the English public will pay a good price for it. At present the farmers are mostly too ignorant and indolent to do this. The fruit, as the Government Botanist complains, is thrown into kerosene tins or any chance receptacle, and sent off to be hawked about the local towns instead of being properly graded and sold in Europe and America. They should be taught the methods of California. Unlike the Cape, California has no near markets, as at Cape Town and Johannesburg. The shortest journey is to Chicago, 2,500 miles by rail, which costs £10 for every ton of fruit. New York is 3,500 miles distant, yet tens of thousands of tons are sent by rail to each city. They also ship their fruit another 3,000 miles by sea from New York to England, making 6,500 miles in all; and they make this pay, though their season is the same as our own. California had the season of the Cape, and could get its peach and grape crops into our market in the winter and spring, it would double its industry. But the organisation of the Californian growers is perfect. The Fruit Growers' Union, in "acre shares," so that the smallest and the largest owners are members, collects the fruit, despatches it, and finds a market. The Cape growers have only to study the Californian system of business and modern modes of culture, and Nature will complete an industry as valuable as the goldfields and more lasting.

If

EARLY STRAWBERRIES.

We have been shown and have tasted some strawberries which were grown at Mooloolah by Mr. C. Court from seed imported by him from Mr. Root, the most celebrated strawberry-grower in America. The fruit in question was forwarded to Mr. A. H. Benson, Government Fruit Expert, who furnishes the following particulars about the berries:

The fruit is of beautiful shape, one variety being large and broad, the other of most symmetrical conical form. The flavour is in marked contrast to that