hyacinth
bean, scarlet-runner bean, poppy, portalucca, nasturtium, marigolds
(especially the large double French, and the velvet variegated),
martineau, cypress vine.

FOWLS.

We are glad to believe that _the hen mania_, that has prevailed so
extensively during the last fifteen or twenty years, has considerably
abated. After all the extravagant notions about the profits of hens
shall have passed away, the truth will be seen to be about the
following: Every farmer who has considerable waste grain about, and
plenty more to supply the deficiency when the fowls shall have gathered
up all the scatterings, had better keep a hundred hens. If he has sand
and gravel, and wheat-bran and lime for shells, within their reach, and
plenty of fresh water, they will do well, without much further care, in
mild weather. In cold weather in winter, keep not more than forty hens
together, in a tight, warm place, well ventilated; give them their usual
food, with burnt bones pounded fine and mixed with mush, given warm,
with occasionally a little animal food and boiled vegetables, and they
will lay more than in summer. They will lay all winter without being
inclined to set. Every family, who will treat them as above, may
profitably keep one or two dozen through the winter. Most persons who
undertake, with a few acres of land, to keep fowls as a business, will
lose by it. A few only of the most experienced and careful can make
money by it. It may be cheapest for some persons to raise a few chickens
for their own use, although they cost them more than the market-price,
though it would not be best to raise chickens in that way to sell. "But
some one raised the chickens in market for the market-price, and why not
I?" Because, they raised a few that got fat on waste grain, and you must
buy grain for yours, and give more for it than you can get for your
chickens. Whoever would make money by raising fowls on a large scale,
must first serve some kind of an apprenticeship at it, as in all other
business. Get this experience, and learn by experiment the cheapest and
most profitable food, and keep from five hundred to a thousand fowls,
and a reasonable though not large profit may be realized. For
store-fowls, boiled vegetables and beets cut very fine, with a little
meal mixed in, are a good and cheap feed. When keeping fowls out-door in
warm weather, keep no more than fifty together, and them on not less
than one fourth of an acre of land. The expens