But I expected great things from the Aylesburys. I procured the best ducks to be had in the country, while I used imported drakes from the best prize-winners in England, and I have never yet seen those drakes equaled in size; and I was unusually careful in this experiment, because I knew that the English breeders claimed for their birds a superiority in all the points essential for a good market bird, namely, delicacy and flavor of flesh, size, precocity, and greater egg production,--laying special stress on their hardiness and vitality. I bred those birds clear and crossed them, carefully noting the result. Our first batch of Pekins and those crosses numbered about 300, nearly equally divided. These were mixed and confined in two yards. For the first two weeks there was no perceptible difference, when gradually the young Pekins began to outgrow the crosses, the difference increasing with age. The former were very even in size, the latter irregular, while the mortality was as six to one in favor of the Pekins. When we began to kill those birds the Pekins were all in the market at the end of eleven weeks, while the crosses remained in the yards fully one week behind. The weight was in favor of the Pekins about one pound per pair. The same difficulty existed as in former years--the tenacity of the feathers. The pickers grumbled, while the birds were more or less disfigured. I notified the dealers of the breeds of those ducks, and of the claim made by the English breeders, and wished them to ascertain if possible if there was any difference in favor of the Aylesburys. They said their customers found no preference, for themselves they preferred the Pekins on account of the larger size and finer appearance of the dressed birds. But I found it made a vast deal more difference than that to me. One pound per pair on 2,000 pairs of ducklings, at an average price of twenty-five cents per pound, made a difference of more than $500 to me; especially the extra ten days required to mature the Aylesburys cost more than the feed for extra pound of flesh grown upon the Pekins. I do not keep Aylesburys now, and have not since that experiment; I never shall again. Precocity. There is one point which I wish to impress, which is too often overlooked, and yet is of the most vital importance to the poultry grower, and that is the early maturity of his market birds. I often hear growers say that as there is very little change in the poultry market during nine months of the year, and as they do not contend for the early spring prices anyway, if their birds are three or four weeks longer in maturing it does not matter. Does is not? I have always contended that it requires just so much to sustain life in either bird or animal, and the profit consists in what we can get them to consume and digest over and above that; and if the time required to do this is protracted longer than is necessary, it is done at the expense of the grower.