shillings each, then considered a high price for a fowl, rose to ten pounds for a fine specimen, and ultimately a hundred guineas was repeatedly paid for a single cock, and was not an uncommon price for a pair of really fine birds. "They were afterwards bred," says Miss Watts, "for qualities difficult of attainment, and, as the result proved, little worth trying for," and "fowls with _many_ excellent qualities were blamed for not being _perfect_," and they fell from their high place, and were as unjustly depreciated as they had been unduly exalted. "Had these birds," wrote Mr. Baily many years since, "been shy breeders--if like song birds the produce of a pair were four, or at most five, birds in the year, prices might have been maintained; but as they are marvellous layers they increased. They bred in large numbers, and consequently became cheaper, and then the mania ended, because those who dealt most largely in them did so not from a love of the birds or the pursuit, but as a speculation. As they had over-praised them before, they now treated them with contempt. Anything like a moderate profit was despised, and the birds were left to their own merits. These were sufficient to ensure their popularity, and now after fluctuating in value more than anything except shares, after being over-praised and then abused, they have remained favourites with a large portion of the public, sell at a remunerating price, and form one of the largest classes at all the great exhibitions." This has proved to be a perfectly correct view, and the breed is now firmly established in public estimation, and unusually fine birds will still sell for from five to twenty pounds each. The mania did great service to the breeding and improvement of poultry by awakening an interest in the subject throughout the kingdom which has lasted.