_Seasonable_ at any time.

VARIOUS MODES OF FATTENING FOWLS.--It would, I think, be a
difficult matter to find, among the entire fraternity of
fowl-keepers, a dozen whose mode of fattening "stock" is the
same. Some say that the grand f secret is to give them abundance
of saccharine food; others say nothing beats heavy corn steeped
in milk; while another breeder, celebrated in his day, and the
recipient of a gold medal from a learned society, says, "The
best method is as follows:-The chickens are to be taken from the
hen the night after they are hatched, and fed with eggs
hard-boiled, chopped, and mixed with crumbs of bread, as larks
and other small birds are fed, for the first fortnight; after
which give them oatmeal and treacle mixed so as to crumble, of
which the chickens are very fond, and thrive so fast that, at
the end of two months, they will be as large as full-grown
fowls." Others there are who insist that nothing beats
oleaginous diet, and cram their birds with ground oats and suet.
But, whatever the course of diet favoured, on one point they
seem agreed; and that is, that, while fattening, the fowls
_should be kept in the dark_. Supposing the reader to be a
dealer--a breeder of gross chicken meat for the market (against
which supposition the chances are 10,000 to 1), and beset with
as few scruples as generally trouble the huckster, the advice is
valuable. "Laugh and grow fat" is a good maxim enough; but
"Sleep and grow fat" is, as is well known to folks of porcine
attributes, a better. The poor birds, immured in their dark
dungeons, ignorant that there is life and sunshine abroad, tuck
their heads under their wings and make a long night of it; while
their digestive organs, having no harder work than to pile up
fat, have an easy time enough. But, unless we are mistaken, he
who breeds poultry for his own eating, bargains for a more
substantial reward than the questionable pleasure of burying his
carving-knife in chicken grease. Tender, delicate, and
nutritious flesh is the great aim; and these qualities, I can
affirm without fear of contradiction, were never attained by a
dungeon-fatted chicken: perpetual gloom and darkness is as
incompatible with chicken life as it is with human. If you wish
to be convinced of the absurdity of endeavouring to thwart
nature