しく THE AMERICAN POULTRY YARD; COMPRISING THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENT BREEDS OF DOMESTIC POULTRY; WITH COMPLETE DIRECTIONS FOR THEIR BREEDING, CROSSING, REARING THE TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPAL DISEASES TO Entored according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by EPHRAIM BLANCHARD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southe. District of New York. DAYTON PRO ENG 5 AG’40 PREFACE. THE зcope and intention of the present treatise, perhaps, is sufficiently declared in the title page. Therefore, to waste the reader's time by further details would be as impertinent as unnecessary. The hasty manner in which these pages have been com. piled, the want of a more intimate knowledge of the history and pedigree of the various breeds of our domestic birds, of which but few records are to be found, together with the limited nature of the work itself, are the only apologies the author has to offer for any errors and deficiencies with which he doubtless may be charged. Without great aid from those who have written before him, the volume, though not large, never could have appeared; yet, most of the current books on poultry are but compilations of matter, valuable only to those practically acquainted with the subject, and many of them unsuited to our economy as weli as to our climate, and full of errors and confusion, that would be obvious to the attentive reader, even though he never had seen a fowl in his life. In order to write a perfect work on poultry, two important desiderata would be required for its attainment; one or the other of them would be indispensable-the first, a complete set of full-sized colored figures of every variety, giving both the male and female, the egg, and the newly-hatched chick, with accurate and technical descriptions of their plumage and their characteristic properties; the second, a collection of stuffed specimens of the representatives of every breed for comparison and reference. The first of these might be accomplished by a person, or an association of persons of fortune, by procuring a complete collection of all the varieties whose characters are decidedly distinct, both of this country and from abroad, and breeding them in-and-in for a series of years, as well as by judicious crossing with one another. An enterprise of this kind, conducted with proper intelligence and experience, however trivial it may appear in the eyes of many, would be worth millions to the country, and prove a boon to mankind. In order that he may not be accused of the reproach of "strutting in borrowed plumes," the author has the candor to confess that he has made a free use of the labors of Pliny, Columella, Cuba, Aldrovandi, Mascall, Réaumur, Moubray, Parmentier, Flourens, W. B. Dickson, J. J. Nolan, W. C. L. Martin, and the Rev. Edmund S. Dixon, particularly of those of the four gentlemen last named, without giving them, in numerous instances, such credit as the punctilious critic would seem to demand. Be this as it may, the author has endeavored not to deviate from estab lished custom, except in cases where he deemed it expedient to change the language, in part, for the sake of brevity, elucidation, or Americanising the subject, or adapting it to our climate, economy, and social condition. Much of the matter, however, and several of the illustrations, he claims to be original. With this avowal, he will declare no more than his full trust in a candid consideration of whatever merit his book may deserve. |