Ducklings should not be allowed to go on the water till feathers have supplied the place of their early down, for the latter will get saturated with the water while the former throws off the wet. "Though the young ducklings," says Mr. W. C. L. Martin, "take early to the water, it is better that they should gain a little strength before they be allowed to venture into ponds or rivers; a shallow vessel of water filled to the brim and sunk in the ground will suffice for the first week or ten days, and this rule is more especially to be adhered to when they are under the care of a common hen, which cannot follow them into the pond, and the calls of which when there they pay little or no regard to. Rats, weasels, pike, and eels are formidable foes to ducklings: we have known entire broods destroyed by the former, which, having their burrows in a steep bank around a sequestered pond, it was found impossible to extirpate." If the ducklings stay too long in the water they will have diarrhoea, in which case coop them close for a few days, and mix bean-meal or oatmeal with their ordinary food. A troop of ducks will do good service to a kitchen garden in the summer or autumn, when they can do no mischief by devouring delicate salads and young sprouting vegetables. They will search industriously for snails, slugs, woodlice, and millipedes, and gobble them up eagerly, getting positively fat on slugs and snails. Strawberries, of which they are very fond, must be protected from them. Where steamed food is daily prepared for pigs and cattle, a portion of this mixed with bran and barley-meal is the cheapest mode of satisfying their voracious appetites. They should never be stinted in food. To fatten ducks let them have as much substantial food as they will eat, bruised oats and peameal being the standard, plenty of exercise, and clean water. Boiled roots mixed with a little barley-meal is excellent food, with a little milk added during fattening. They require neither penning up nor cramming to acquire plumpness, and if well fed should be fit for market in eight or ten weeks. Celery imparts a delicious flavour. The Aylesbury is the finest breed, and should be of a spotless white, with long, flat, broad beak of a pale flesh colour, grey eyes, long head and neck, broad and flat body and breast, and orange legs, placed wide apart. As it lays early, its ducklings are the earliest ready for market. They have produced 150 large eggs in a year, and are better sitters than the Rouen. The Rouen is hardy and easily reared, but rarely lay till February or March. They thrive better in most parts of England than the Aylesburys, and care less for the water than the other varieties. They are very handsome, and weigh eight or nine pounds each, and their flesh is excellent.