Three hundred pairs of Homer pigeons were placed in the house built for that purpose, and we went diligently to work to prove that this was the quick and easy way to wealth which the ingenious writers of squab literature proved so conclusively on paper. On the chicken side of the experiment we seemed to lean (possibly because of the fact that squabs take one into the slaughter house business) towards one or more of the market breeds, and, to meet the needs of this part of the business, we understood that any of the “Rock” family were best for the purpose. Started with 60 Buff Rock Eggs We purchased an incubator with the capacity of sixty eggs, being fearful of attempting the operation of a larger machine, because, like a great many novices, we had the feeling that an incubator was a very dangerous thing, and that anyone without a vast amount of experience should not attempt to handle it. We placed in this diminutive machine sixty Buff Rock eggs, and obtained a very fair hatch. With daily contact our fear of the machine decreased, and we exchanged it for one with a capacity of one hundred and twenty-five eggs, and this, in turn, was exchanged for one holding two hundred and fifty eggs. [Illustration: INTERIOR STERILE LAYING HOUSE NO. 3 IN 1910] We obtained fairly large flocks of youngsters that season, but, as we had the usual hallucination that poultry culture was really a miracle, and required neither work, capital, nor brains, that all you had to do was to accept the profit and the chickens did it all themselves, we did not get so very far. The growth of the birds was so slow they did not reach a profitable weight until the broiler market had dropped the price to its lowest level. The pullets which we carried through the winter never produced an egg, for the simple reason that we had never studied the question out as to how the hen produces an egg. In other words, our lack of knowledge of the right methods was the reason for charging up a considerable loss instead of profit so far as the first season’s work with hens went. We very early discovered there must have been a considerable amount of fiction in the writings on the squab industry. One reads that a pair of pigeons eats nothing like the amount of food which is required for one hen, and that they never eat more than their exact wants require, and that when they have young in the nest, this amount is very slightly increased. We found, however, that they ate in season and out of season. In fact one recalls, in this connection, and with considerable amusement, the song, in the light opera “Wang,” of the elephant who ate all day and the elephant who ate all night.