I have read, and many times, that they do no injury at all; but this is a grevious mis take, as before harvest, whilst the crops are ripening, they destroy more corn round homesteads than they are worth, and at seeding time, also, in dry weather, they rush in and scratch out the seed from large tracks of the corn sown near their home ; and also among youngclovers, they pick out and destroy more hearts of the clover than thej r are worth. I have often seen near a homestead at least two acres of young clover ruined by fowls. A friend of mine employs an aged man at 6 or 7s a week, to protect his crops from h>* .owls, which weekly payments

soon run up to more money than tlie fowls are worm. Then, again, among young mangels the fowls play havoc; I myself having suffered very much in this way from cottagers' fowls. If you com plain, no one will admit that the fowls are theirs, but when you can bear with the injury no longer, and shoot among the innocent intruders, then you have all your poor neighbours raving against you that you have been shooting their fowls, and then, again, away they run with their exaggerated tales to some pitying justice of the peace, who directs them to a law yer ; and thus I am satisfied that cotta gers cannot keep fowls, nor even farmers, at a profit, beyond a limited number. But two kinds of men make good profits by fowl keeping, one of these was an old lady’s coachman, whom I knew, who had always a fat fowl or two to sell, and some times near a dozen ; the other men are workers in barns, with large shoes or boots : these can turn fowl keeping to a good account, just as threshers formerly used to keep each a pig or two to turn into bacon. Such are exceptional cases, but I know r no others, except, perpaps, hostlers at inns, who may keep a few fowls at their homes rather cheaply, to the great, grief of their customers’ horses. But I pro mised to write a word or tw r o on labourers’ cottages, for their general badness of which landlords are often greatly mali gned. 