So they left me, one by one, like the illusions of youth, until there was no “survival of the fittest.”

In a ragged old barn opposite, a hen had stolen her nest and brought out seventeen vigorous chicks.  I paid a large bill for the care of what might have been a splendid collection, and meekly bought that faithful old hen with her large family.  It is now a wonder to me that any chickens arrive at maturity.  Fowls are afflicted with parasitic wrigglers in their poor little throats.  The disease is called “gapes,” because they try to open their bills for more air until a red worm in the trachea causes suffocation.  This horrid red worm, called scientifically Scelorostoma syngamus, destroys annually half a million of chickens.

Dr. Crisp, of England, says it would be of truly national importance to find the means of preventing its invasion.

The unpleasant results of hens and garden contiguous, Warner has described.  They are incompatible if not antagonistic.  One man wisely advises:  “Fence the garden in and let the chickens run, as the man divided the house with his quarrelsome wife, by taking the inside himself and giving her the outside, that she might have room according to her strength.”

Looking over the long list of diseases to which fowls are subject is dispiriting.  I am glad they can’t read them, or they would have all at once, as J.K.  Jerome, the witty playwright, decided he had every disease found in a medical dictionary, except housemaid’s knee.  Look at this condensed list: 

    DISEASES OF NERVOUS SYSTEM.—­1.  Apoplexy. 2.  Paralysis. 3.  Vertigo.
    4.  Neuralgia. 5.  Debility.

    DISEASES OF DIGESTIVE ORGANS.—­99.

    DISEASES OF LOCOMOTIVE ORGANS.—­1.  Rheumatism. 2.  Cramp. 3.  Gout. 4. 
    Leg weakness. 5.  Paralysis of legs. 6.  Elephantiasis.

    Next, diseases caused by parasites.

    Then, injuries.

    Lastly, miscellaneous.

I could add a still longer list of unclassified ills:  Homesickness, fits, melancholia, corns, blindness from fighting too much, etc.

Now that I have learned to raise chickens, it is a hard and slow struggle to get any killed.  I say in an off-hand manner, with assumed nonchalance:  “Ellen, I want Tom to kill a rooster at once for tomorrow’s dinner, and I have an order from a friend for four more, so he must select five to-night.”  Then begins the trouble.  “Oh,” pleads Ellen, “don’t kill dear Dick! poor, dear Dick!  That is Tom’s pet of all; so big and handsome and knows so much!  He will jump up on Tom’s shoulder and eat out of his hand and come when he calls—­and those big Brahmas—­don’t you know how they were brought up by hand, as you might say, and they know me and hang around the door for crumbs, and that beauty of a Wyandock, you couldn’t eat him!” When the matter is decided, as the guillotining is going on, Ellen and I sit listening