Many people suppose that if once they have serious trouble with this disease, it is useless for them to try to grow turkeys, but this is an error. The germs of the disease are destroyed by cultivating the land and exposing them to the sun and air. Three or four years of cultivation will rid a piece of land of disease germs, no matter how badly it is affected. The infection is not usually distributed in dangerous quantities all over a farm or all over the land on which the turkeys and fowls have ranged. It is principally on the land near the farm buildings. There would be very little danger from diseases of this kind on farms if those who feed the poultry would make it a practice to scatter food on clean grass or cultivated ground at a little distance from the buildings, instead of giving it (as too many do) on ground that is bare year after year and never cultivated. On a large farm the turkeys should not require close attention after they are two months old. A little food may be given to them in the morning and again in the evening, to keep them familiar with the person in charge, and if they are inclined to stray too far, they should be rounded up soon after noon and started toward home. Having started in that direction, they may be left to come at their leisure. They should pick the most of their living until the time comes to begin to fatten them. Beginning about three weeks before they are to be killed, they should be fed two or three times a day all the whole corn they will eat. CHAPTER XII GUINEAS =Description.= The guinea, or guinea fowl, is about the size of a small fowl. It is very much like the fowl in some respects but not at all like it in some others. Naturalists classify it in the pheasant family, but its present place in domestication is so different from that of the pheasant that a poultry keeper hardly ever associates them in his thought. In appearance the guinea is a unique bird. The shape of the body and shape of the head are both peculiar. The body is quite plump, the back nearly horizontal, and the tail short and much depressed. The neck and legs are rather short. The feathers of the neck are short, and the head is bare. The skin of the head and face is a bluish-white. The bird has a small, knoblike red comb and short, stiff, red wattles projecting from the cheeks. The plumage of the body is quite long, loose, and soft, and lies so smoothly that it appears much shorter and closer than it is.