Let no man turn up his contemptuous nose at this Treatise until he has traced the manifold relations of eggs and capons to cake, company, and civilization. Banish the barnyard, and the universal aldermanhood would shrink and grow lean; cup-cakes and sponge-cakes, omelets, whips and legionary confections, would become mere dreams of remembrance.
Every friend of the trencher, every notable housewife,
complacently glorious amidst stacks of praised and devoured cake, has an interest in this book. There is, therefore, a certain interest which every civilized community should take in the progress of the great art of fowl-breeding.
There are striking analogies, also, which should be noticed by every comparative psychologist. The doctrine of transmigration has some of its strongest proofs in the Kingdom of Poultry. The glowing comb, the haughty carriage, the resplendent tail-feathers, and ostentatious crowing of the lord of the barn-yard creation, reveals to the sagacious reasoner either the origin or destination of many other “lords of creation.”
Nor can one mistake the resemblances traceable in the gentler sex of hens. Some there are industrious only in scratching and cackling, but nervous, gadding, restless; never content at home, never so happy as when at work in a new-made garden, and sagacious always of the very spots which are most precious in the owner’s eyes. Are these the types of human busybodies, or are these resemblances only accidental? Others are discreet, domestic, prolific, useful and happy hens, human and feathered. Many there are neglectful. Some fowls are laborious egg-layers, but poor setters; others disdain the pains of laying, but are quite willing of a leisure summer’s month to set awhile upon other eggs.
In the management, too, of their families, can any candid man resist the evidence of resemblances and affiliations between hens and humanity? Here a hen walks forth from her nest with but a single chick; the whole farm is too small for her anxious spirit. On this one precious pledge she bestows more clucking, more research and scratching, than a discreet old matron of many broods would upon five annual generations! And after all, what is the little brat good for—lazy and worked for, but never taught to work, it lives a few months petted and spoiled—dies of neglect, or is anatomized by some science-loving
weasel! Other, and unnatural hens there are, to whom the vast brood of peeping, chirping chicks is but a burden. They seem to have thoughts of their own, and are perplexed and interrupted by the cares needful for their household. Could we pry into the secrets of this race, doubtless there would be found to be literary mothers, too busy for the general good to have much time for special duties. We cannot stop now to draw out these analogies, so well worthy the study of mental philosophers; else we should exhibit the distinctions of rank, race, and culture, in this interesting kingdom. There are nice questions of pedigree, there are points in relation to feathers and top-knots, combs and spurs, tail-feathers and wing-feathers, neck-hackles and toes, which are worthy the attention of any Calhoun of the barn-yard. The more savory but homely considerations of fattening, slaying, dressing, selling, stuffing, cooking, carving, distributing, eating and digestion, must be left to our readers’ own reflections. Meanwhile, any man that owns a hen, or has a coop in prospect, may buy this book, certain of his money’s worth. Book-farming and book-fowling are better than nothing.
[22] Published by A. O. Moore & Co., New York. Price $1 00.