he yard, all the better.

If it be desirable to have fresh eggs during winter--and that is
certainly a convenience--a box stove may be set in the living room, and
properly protected by a grating around it, for warming the living
apartment. It may be remarked, however, that this winter-laying of hens
is usually a _forcing_ business. A hen will lay but about a given number
of eggs in a year; say a hundred--we believe this is about the number
which the most observant of poultry-keepers allow them--and what she
lays in winter must be subtracted from the number she would otherwise
lay in the spring, summer, or autumn. Yet a warm house will, laying,
aside, keep the fowls with less food, and in greater comfort, than if
cold, and left to their own natural warmth.

There is usually little difficulty in keeping hens, turkies, ducks, and
geese together, in the same inclosure, during winter and early spring,
before the grass grows. But geese and turkies require greater range
during the warm season than the others, and should have it, both for
convenience to themselves and profit to their owners. For winter
quarters, low shelters may be made for the water-fowls in the yards, and
the turkies will frequently prefer to share the shelter of the hens, on
the roosts in the house. Guinea-hens--cruel, vindictive things, as they
are--should never be allowed within a common poultry yard. Always
quarrelsome, and never quiet, they should take to the farmyard, with the
cattle, where they may range at will, and take their amusement in
fisticuffs with each other, at pleasure. Neither should peacocks be
allowed to come into the poultry inclosures, during the breeding season;
they are anything but amiable in their manners to other birds.

With the care and management of the poultry department, after thus
providing for their accommodation, it is not our province to interfere;
that is a subject too generally understood, to require further remark.
Nor need we discuss the many varieties of poultry which, at the present
time, so arrest the attention of many of our good country people; and we
will leave so important a subject to the meditations of the "New England
Poultry Society," who have taken the gallinaceous, and other tribes
under their special cognizance, and will, doubtless, in due time,
illumine the world with various knowledge in this department of rural
economy, not yet "dreamt of in our philosophy." The recently published
poultry books, too,