and tender at a distance of one hundred yards, there must be good musical elements in it to begin with. I do not remark this dreaminess in the notes of other birds, some crowing at an equal distance, others still further away. All natural music is heard best at a distance; like the chiming of bells, and the music of the flute, and the wild confused strains of the bagpipes, for among artificial sounds these come the nearest to those made by nature. The "shrill sharps" of the thrush must be softened by distance to charm; and the skylark, when close at hand, has both shrill and harsh sounds scarcely pleasing. He must mount high before you can appreciate his merit. I do not recommend any one to keep a caged cock in his study for the sake of its music, crow it never so well. To return to the ten cockerels; they did not crow very much, and at first I paid little attention to them. After a few days I remarked that one individual among them was rapidly acquiring the clear vigorous strain of the adult bird. Compared with that fine note which I have described, it was still weak and shaky, but in shape it was similar, and the change had come while its brethren were still uttering brief and harsh screeches as at the beginning. Probably, where there is a great mixture of varieties, it is the same with the fowl as with man in the diversity of the young, different ancestral characters appearing in different members of the same family. This cockerel was apparently the musical member, and promised in a short time to rival his neighbour. Having heard that it was intended to keep one of the cockerels to be the parent of future broods, I began to wonder whether the prize in the lottery--to wit, life and a modest harem--would fall to this fine singer or not. The odds were that his musical career would be cut short by an early death, since the ten birds were very much alike in other respects, and I felt perfectly sure that his superior note would weigh nothing in the balance. For when has the character of the voice influenced a fancier in selecting? Never I believe, odd as it seems. I have read a very big book on the various breeds of the fowl, but the crowing of the cock was not mentioned in it. This would not seem so strange if fanciers had invariably looked solely to utility, and their highest ambition had ended at size, weight and quality of flesh, early maturity, hardihood, and the greatest number of eggs. This has not been the case. They possess, like others, the love of the beautiful, artificial as their standards sometimes appear; and there are breeds in which beauty seems to have been the principal object, as, for instance, in several of the gold and silver spangled and pencilled varieties. But, besides beauty of plumage, there are other things in the fowl worthy of being improved by selection. One of these has been cultivated by man for thousands of years, namely, the combative spirit and splendid courage of the male bird.