Wichita Poultry Home Monthly from Wichita, Kansas • 9

WICHITA POULTRY HOME. 121. purposes. They have large frames, good appetite, and their digestive organs are capable of assimilating a large quantity of food. Apparently they have largest bodies than the Aylesburys, yet they do not average their weight.

It is their precocity, together with their prolificacy which makes them preferred by market breeders. Their flesh is sweet, juicy, and well flavored. They are hardy and easily raised, if not inbred too much, and a small pond will satisfy their wants. The Pekin duck, like the Cochin, is possibly the product of several thousand years culture. This is shown by the size, form, and almost rudimentary wings, the widest, or farthest departure from the wild Mallard.

The ducklings when four or five months old, attain almost full size. This early size and condition render them profitable for early market. Roast duck with the usual accompaniments suits the epicure and our well-to-do city folks, who like good things. It is a favorite dish with royalty itself. The wonder is that duck culture has been so long and so sadly neglected among us, as we have every facility and the best of breeds to work up a successful and important branch of poultry indus-Poultry Monthly.

Subscribers. TAKE NOTICE--That notwithstanding the fact that we are publishing the HOME at the low price of 50 cents per year and also that each copy shall be worth the subscription price to anyone interested in the raising or brooding of poultry either blooded or otherwise, yet as an extra inducement and as a further means of benefitting our patrons we offer as A PREMIUM one pound of the 'Home Cholera one of the best remedies known to science for Cholera." This of itself is worth ten times the price of the HOME for a year, and no matter whether our readers have all the Poultry Journals they want or not they cannot afford to do without a safe and reliable cure for the dread of the poultry yard--the cholera. Remember it is FREE to each subscriber sending us fifty cents as the price of the WICHITA POULTRY HOME for a year and paying postage. It will not be sold to any one who is not a subscriber for the HOME. THE OLD HEN'S COMPETITOR.

Tons of Eggs on the Farallon Islands are Stolen By Poachers. EXT to the Behring Sea seal slaughter there is nothing concerns California so closely on on the Northern Pacific as the whole sale pillaging of the nests of sea birds on the Farallon Islands. It is one of the ironies of fate that while Great Britian rigidly protects even the smallest birds on her own territory during the season, she does not disdain to lay violent hands on the animals of a neighbor friendly power, and, on the other hand, that friendly power' to wit: the United States, looks calmly on while its wild fowl are decimated within sight of its shores by aliens and even by its own citizens. For it so happens that the sea birds and land birds which annually visit the Farallon group for the purpose of reproducing their species have a foe to reckon with whose grasp is as ruthless as it is fatal. Some idea may be formed of the annual decimation of California and North Pacific sea birds when it is stated that 3,000,000 of egg were brought into San Francisco market from the Farallons in four years, and that in an immense majority of cases the parent bird produced but a single egg---none more than three.

Even at the present time the average import of sea birds eggs from the Farallons is 180,000 annually. By courtesy they are elled the eggs of the "murree." As a matter of fact the true "murree" or "razor bill" is a tolerably exclusive inhabitant of the seaboard of the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Henry. The Farallon rookeries affords even under the existing conditions of rapid depopulation and barefaced, unchecked spoliation, a wonderful example of the prolific power of uature on the shores of a subtropical land. The principle island- the South Farallon, on which the lighthouse is situated may run short of potable water in every dry season, but the lighthouse people would never starve for the want of animal food. Nevertheless, the birds are gradually deserting the islands.

The bones of numerons species of Pacific coast birds, rarely or never seen now are common in the sheltered caves of the group. The varions species of auks, the pufting, the guillemots, the cormorants are commom and the plovers and petrels still breed on the island, but other California birds, once quite familiar visitors to the group, have sought abodes less disturbed by the egg poacher, the ornithologist, and the pot hunter. Of all the birds on the group the puflins are the most picturesqne and entertaining to the visitor and the ornithologist. The auk family is, however, the principal contributor to the egg poacher's wallet. Just as soon as the "merry month of May" approaches there i's a stir among the small schooners and sailing crafts in San Francisco bay, and silently, "like a thief in the each skipper works his way out between the heads of the "Farallons." His crew, mostly composed of Greeks and Italians, with a liberal sprinkling of water front castaways, effect a quiet, unperceived landing on the South Farallon, usually on the Sugar Loaf rock, to the northwest, because thats the spot where the birds breed earliest.

The cliff's are quite rugged, and with a perpendicuar of nearly 130 feet the sport is no child's play, and accidents are not infrequent. Each hunter is furnished with a shirt egg of special construction, provided with an open front for stowing away the eggs, and a bed of soft seaweed about the waistband for the eggs to rest on. A good hand will pick out and get away with 200 eggs a day in this -San Francisco Chronicle. The hatching season is about over, especially for the larger breeds. Hens that are set now will hatch in June and the little chicks will then bave to rustle in the hot weather amid chiggers, etc.

They will not be thoroughly developed before cold weather and the result will be 110 laying in the winter. The smaller breeds such as the Leghorn, Hamburg, may be hatched for a considerable timeyet owing to the fact that they develop rapidly..