[Footnote 181:  Reading ad infirma crura.  This practice is explained more at length by Columella (VIII, 2, 3) who specifies the spurs, calcaribus inustis.

Buffon, who describes a ’practice of trimming the combs of capons, adds (V, 302) an interesting account of an experiment which he says he had made “une espece de greffe animale”:  after trimming the comb of a growing cockerel his budding spurs were cut out and grafted on the roots of the comb, where they took root and flourished, growing to a length of two and a half inches, in some cases curving forward like the horns of a ram, and in others turning back like those of a goat.]

[Footnote 182:  The dusting yard which Varro here describes was in the open, but Columella (VIII, 3) advises what modern poultry farmers pride themselves upon having recently discovered,—­a covered scratching pen strewn with litter to afford exercise for the hens in rough weather.  It will be observed that, so far as ventilation is concerned, Varro recommends a hen house open to the weather:  this is another standard of modern practice which has had a hard struggle against prejudice.  Columella adds two more interesting bits of advice, that for the comfort of the hens the roosts should be cut square, and for cleanliness their water trough should be enclosed leaving only openings large enough to receive a hen’s head.  With so much enlightenment and sanitation one would expect one or the other of these Romans to tell us of some “teeming hen” like Herrick’s who laid “her egg each day.”

We are proud to be able to cite the eminent Roseburg Industrious Biddy who, in the year of grace 1912, achieved the championship of America with a record of 266 eggs in ten months and nineteen days, and was sold for $800:  but Varro is content to suggest that a hen will lay more eggs in a season than she can hatch, and the conservative Columella (VIII, 5) that the number of eggs depends upon diet.]

[Footnote 183:  The guinea fowl got their Greek name, meleagrides, because the story was that the sisters of Meleager were turned into guinea hens.  Pliny (H.N. X, 38) says that they fight every year on Meleager’s tomb.  It is a fact that they are a pugnacious fowl.  Buffon says that guinea fowl disappeared from Europe in the Dark Ages and were not known again until the route to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope was opened when they were imported anew from the west coast of Africa.]

[Footnote 184:  Reading, “propter fastidium hominum.”  Cf.  Pliny (X, 38), whose explanation is “propter ingratum virus.”]

[Footnote 185:  There is a Virginia practice of feeding a fat turkey heavily on bread soaked in wine or liquor just before he is killed, the result being that as the turkey gets into that condition which used to put our ancestors under the table, he relaxes all his tendons and so is sweeter and more tender when he comes above the table.  There is a humanitarian side to the practice which should recommend it even to the W.C.T.U. as well as to the epicure.]