Some poultry-keepers recommend that the grain should be boiled, which makes it swell greatly, and consequently fills the fowl's crop with a smaller quantity, and the bird is satisfied with less than if dry grain be given; but others say that the fowls derive more nutriment from the same quantity of grain unboiled. Indeed, it seems evident that a portion of the nutriment must pass into the water, and also evaporate in steam. The fowl's gizzard being a powerful grinding mill, evidently designed by Providence for the purpose of crushing the grain into meal, it is clear that whole grain is the natural diet of fowls, and that softer kinds of food are chiefly to be used for the first or morning meal for fowls confined in houses (see p. 34), and for those being fattened artificially in coops, where it is desired to help the fowl's digestive powers, and to convert the food into flesh as quickly as possible. Indian corn or maize, either whole or in meal, must not be given in too great a proportion, as it is very fattening from the large quantity of oil it contains; but mixed with barley or barley-meal, it is a most economical and useful food. It is useful for a change, but is not a good food by itself. It may be given once or twice a week, especially in the winter, with advantage. From its size small birds cannot eat it and rob the fowls. Whether whole or in meal, the maize should be scalded, that the swelling may be done before it is eaten. The yellow-coloured maize is not so good as that which is reddish or rather reddish-brown. Buckwheat is about equal to barley in flesh-forming food, and is very much used on the Continent. Mr. Wright has "a strong opinion that the enormous production of eggs and fowls in France is to some extent connected with the almost universal use of buckwheat by French poultry-keepers." It is not often to be had cheap in this country, but is hardy and may be grown anywhere at little cost. Mr. Edwards says, he "obtained (without manure) forty bushels to the acre, on very poor sandy soil, that would not have produced eighteen bushels of oats. The seed is angular in form, not unlike hempseed; and is stimulating, from the quantity of spirit it contains." Peas, beans, and tares contain an extraordinary quantity of flesh-forming material, and very little of fat-forming, but are too stimulating for general use, and would harden the muscular fibres and give too great firmness of flesh to fowls that are being fattened, but where tares are at a low price, or peas or beans plentiful, stock fowls may be advantageously fed upon any of these, and they may be given occasionally to fowls that are being fattened. It is better to give them boiled than in a raw state, especially if they are hard and dry, and the beans in particular may be too large for the fowls to swallow comfortably. Near Geneva fowls are fed chiefly upon tares. Poultry reject the wild tares of which pigeons are so fond.