“It is the birds of silver variety, however, which I regard and recommend as perfect miracles of egg-producing constancy. They commence laying, if in good health and with a _good run_ (an essential to the well-doing of both the varieties), at _five_ months old, and generally lay at least six days out of the seven, until the moulting season arrives--in all probably some 250 eggs. They very quickly get their new plumage--and in six weeks recommence their labours with the same praiseworthy diligence, until another season passed warns them that moulting time is again at hand. After the second year I do not consider it advisable to keep them for laying purposes, although I think the best chicken are bred from them after that period with a young yearling cock. “Like their golden relations they never sit, and rarely evince the slightest desire to undertake the task of incubation. I feel quite confident that no fowl produces so much _egg stuff_ with so _small an amount of food_. Give them a good run, a clean, dry, warm house at night, and one quarter of the food you bestow upon Cochins, and you will have no further trouble with them. They feather early and quickly, and may safely be hatched early in April. “I must not, however, omit to state one drawback which there is to the keeping my spangled pets--they fly like pheasants, and know not bounds. They are great enemies to flowers, fruit, vegetables, indeed, anything they can lay hold of; and although capable of being made as tame as any other fowls, in their instincts they seem almost more like game than domesticated poultry. However, as a balance to this, there is no fowl so capable of taking care of itself, of finding its own food, of avoiding danger, and of repaying its owner handsomely for the slight care it demands at his or her hands. Indeed, I cannot recommend to a beginner in poultry-keeping a more beautiful and interesting, or a more profitable selection. “There is much difference of opinion about the desired points of beauty in these birds. For the exact requirements in the north country shows I must refer my readers to the Rules of the Yorkshire Societies, and I will therefore confine myself to a brief and general description of what I consider requisite for perfection in these birds, and firstly as to the golden variety; although, with the exception of a few observations which I shall make about the cocks, the same points are almost requisite in both varieties.