-yard may be made very profitable to any
one who will bestow a little trouble on it. Great care must be taken
with the young chickens at night; the hen should be securely cooped
with them: for want of this precaution we in one night lost eight,
when they were a few days old, being, as we supposed, carried off by
the cats.

The best food for ducks when first hatched is bread and milk; in a few
days barley-meal, wetted with water into balls about as big as peas,
should be given to them. It is usual, as soon as both ducks and
chickens come out of the shell, to put a pepper-corn down their
throats. I don't know that it is really of service to them, but it is
a time-honored custom, and so perhaps it is as well to follow it.

As for our butter-making, it continued to prosper; we had some little
trouble with it in the spring, when the weather set in suddenly very
hot. It was certainly much more difficult to reduce the temperature of
the cream to 55' than it was to raise it to that degree.

I often thought with vain longing of the shop in the Strand, where we
used to purchase Wenham Lake Ice: how firm would the butter have come,
could we have had a few lumps to put in the churn half and hour before
we required to use it!

Farmers' wives tell us, that to get firm butter in very hot weather
they get up at three o'clock in the morning, in order that it may be
made before the sun becomes powerful. Now this is a thing that would
not have suited H. or myself at all, and therefore we never mustered
up courage to attempt it.

One day in March--and this is the last disaster I have to record
concerning our butter--we were particularly anxious to have it good,
as we expected visitors, to whom we had frequently boasted of our
skill as dairywomen: the day was very warm, and the cream appeared
much thicker than usual; we churned for more than an hour without its
appearing to undergo any change; we frequently removed the lid to see
if there was any sign of butter coming, but each time we were
disheartened when we discovered it looked just the same as when placed
in the churn. At last the handle went round as easily as if no cream
were in it, and presently it began to run over the top of the churn.
When we looked in a curious sight presented itself: the cream had
risen to the top, just as milk does when it boils! We were greatly
astonished. In nine months' butter-making we had seen nothing like it.

Tom, who milked the cows was supposed