I. And first with regard to Fruit. Some Tree-Fruits, as well as Grapes, are grown on a large scale in California--it is said, with profit. But nearly all our Pears, Apples, Cherries, Plums, etc., are grown by small farmers or gardeners, and are not likely to be grown otherwise. All of them need at particular seasons a personal attention and a vigilance which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, our Fruit-culture would thenceforth steadily decline. II. The same is even more true of the production of Eggs and the rearing of Fowls. I have had knowledge of several attempts at producing Eggs and Fowls on a large scale in this country, but I have no trustworthy account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the contrary, many attempts to multiply Fowls by thousands have broken down, just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some unforeseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectations of the experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross. Yet, I judge that there is no industry more capable of indefinite extension, with fair returns, than Fowl-breeding on a moderate scale. Eggs and Chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries appreciated alike by rich and poor; and they might be doubled in quantity without materially depressing, the market. Our thronged and fashionable watering-places are never adequately supplied with them; our cities habitually take all they can get and look around for more. I believe that twice the largest number of Chickens ever yet produced in one year might be reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if others should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally elastic. This industry should especially commend itself to poor widows, struggling to retain and rear their children in frugal independence. A widow who, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village, can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward-sloping, sunny land, which she may fence so tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever their roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, and who can incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious Hen-house, may almost certainly make the production of Eggs and Fowls a source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a slaughter-house for feed, giving with it meal or grain in moderate quantities, and according that constant, personal, intelligent supervision, without which Fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she may reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her an occupation not subject to the caprices of an employer, and not requiring her to spend her days away from home.