50 lbs. of food per day, containing about 34 pounds of water-free food. There should be in this about 6 pounds of digestible protein, 14 pounds of digestible nitrogen-free extract and fiber, and 2 pounds of digestible fat.

Per hen the amount of food required per day varies according to the size and somewhat with the season. A smaller hen will eat more in proportion to live weight than a larger one. The difference in amount of food consumed by larger and smaller hens is less when laying than at other times, when enough for maintenance only need be eaten.

A Cochin or Brahma hen when laying requires about 4 ounces of food per day, of which 3 ounces is water-free food. A hen of Leghorn size when laying requires about 3 ounces of total food, or 2 ounces of water-free food, per day.

A much larger amount of food in proportion to the live weight is required by the chicks than by the older fowls. The amount of water-free food required for every one hundred pounds live weight fed is 10.6 lbs. at about one pound average weight; at two pounds 7.5 lbs.; at three pounds 6.4 lbs; at four pounds 5.5 lbs.; at five pounds 5.3 lbs.; at six pounds 4.9 lbs.; at seven pounds 4.7 lbs.; at eight pounds 4 lbs.; at nine pounds 3.3 lbs.; at ten pounds average live weight 3.2 lbs. The amounts of fresh food equivalent to these weights would be correspondingly greater. These are the amounts taken by growing fowls which normally attain to the higher weights given, and which are still immature and growing rapidly when at five and six pounds average weight.

For young chicks the nutritive ratio of the ration fed can be somewhat narrower than those given for laying hens, and for fattening the ration can have a very much wider ratio, although only for short periods.

In

For one hundred hens about 16 quarts of clean water per day is required, especially in dry hot weather. each dozen eggs there is about a pint of water.

A Variety of Food is Essential.

Young hens, especially of the better laying breeds, when in full laying, can be freely fed all they will readily eat, bu

older hens and the young ones when not laying should be fed only enough to keep them eager for food.

Salt should be fed mixed with the food, but not large coarse crystals. One ounce of salt per day for one hundred hens is a good proportion.

Animal food and green or succulent vegetable food, as well as grain, should always be fed to hens that are confined. It is very important that ducks should have these foods, especially growing ducklings.

Some form of grit should be liberally supplied.

A largely grain ration will not contain the lime required by laying hens, and oyster-shells or some other form of carbonate of lime will supply this deficiency.

A grass run is better than any substitute in summer, but no run should contain hens in such number as to kill the grass.

Common fowls, especially laying hens, must be kept in moderately small flocks. Where large numbers are kept, they should be divided in small lots in separate pens and yards. Ten to twenty in a pen give better results than larger numbers. The laying hens should be kept separated from those not laying.

Hens will not always moult early enough to resume laying before midwinter. Chicks should be hatched in March and April if eggs are to be obtained from the pullets in November. Asiatics, to begin laying in the fall, should be hatched in February and March.

The best results in egg production cannot be secured where the average space of open run available per hen is much less than 100 square feet. The average floor-space per hen indoors should be about 20 square feet.

Exercise is of the utmost importance, especially for laying and breeding stock, and a good way to assure this in winter-time is to scatter the grain in straw or any clean and dry substitute.

Dampness is fatal, and dry warm houses free from draughts are essential in winter. The floors should be of dry earth or fine gravel, or wooden floors covered with straw or dry sand. The houses should be warm enough to prevent freezing of water, but should not be warmed by heating apparatus more than will insure against freezing.

By Prof. THOS. SHAW, of Minnesota Experiment Station. Heredity in breeding relates to transmission. It is doubtless governed by fixed laws, but many of these are as yet imperfectly understood. It may be defined as the outcome of the operation of that law whereby properties and qualities of like kind with those of the parents are transmitted to the offspring. This transmission is certainly comprehensive in its character, since it relates to structure, function and qualities, and indeed to every feature of the organization. But in instances not a few there are apparent exceptions to this law of transmission. These, however, are apparent rather than real. They appear to us as exceptions because of the limitations of our knowledge of this great question. These supposed exceptions are doubtless the result of the predominant influence of other laws acting in opposition to the hereditary tendency, and it is characterized as normal, abnormal, and acquired, according to its nature.

The heredity of normal characters means the transmission of those characters which are natural to the type. These may be original traits bestowed upon the species, as for instance, timidity in sheep; or they may have been acquired and rendered permanent by long-continued transmission, as in the changed form of all the improved breeds of domestic animals. The heredity of abnormal characters means the transmission of irregular characters, or those which have deviated from the natural and acquired characteristics of the type. These abnormal characters may appear as malformations of structure, derangement of function, or they may assume one or the other of various forms of disease. Illustrations of the first are found in certain families with an irregular number of fingers and toes; of the second in the inheritance of deafness, dumbness and impaired vision; and of the third, in the reappearance in the offspring of certain diseases possessed by the parents, as, for instance, any of the forms of scrofula

The laws which govern heredity are those also which determine the results in practical breeding. In practice the rules which govern it are almost entirely empirical in their origin, since they have been almost exclusively derived from the accepted methods of the most successful breeders. Those who have given thought to the question will concede that breeding live-stock is at once a science and an art. They will see in it a science in so far as it discovers and systematically arranges those truths and principles which relate to the improvement of live-stock, and it will appear to them an art in so far as they perceive that those principles can be successfully utilized in practice. It is apparent therefore that the relation between the science and the art of breeding is both close and intimate. Without some knowlege of the former the latter is not likely to be successfully practised, and the measure of success which attends the efforts of the breeder will be largely proportionate to the measure of the knowledge which he may possess of the principles of heredity.

Reference has been made to certain laws which govern transmission. Of these three may be considered as funda

mental, viz.: first, the law that "like begets like "; second, the law or principle of variation; and third, the law or principle known as atavism. Since these laws or principles appear to us to lack uniformity and regularity of action, the art of breeding is in consequence much more complicated and uncertain than it would otherwise be. This want of uniformity and of regularity of action, however, is apparent rather than real. But so long as we are ignorant of the cause or causes of these apparent irregularities in transmission, we are unable to prevent them. And yet there is so much of uniformity in the action of these laws that the intelligent breeder cannot be said to play at a game of chance. If well posted in the art, his efforts will in the main be entirely successful.

The law that "like begets like" implies that the characteristics of the parents will appear in their offspring. This law would seem to pervade all animated nature; generally speaking it is uniform in its action, but there are some exceptions. Were it not so, examples to illus. trate such a law of heredity and proofs to support it would not have been needed. That the existence of this law was recognized, and that many of its principles were well understood from an early period, finds ample illustration in the breeding operations conducted by the patriarch Jacob, in the monstrous forms that were bred for the amusement of the Romans when the decline of the empire was pending, and in the care with which the Arabs kept their pedigrees from a remote antiquity.

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So uniform is this principle of heredity in its action that may be designated the compass which guides the breeder into the harbor of success. But before he can anchor there he must give attention to certain principles, a close adherence to which is absolutely essential to higher attainment in results. He must, for instance, breed to a standard of excellence; he must set a proper value on improved blood; and he must understand the art of selection and the principles of good management generally. Without a standard of excellence in his mind, that is, without an ideal type, the breeder does not himself know what he is seeking.