The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1877-03-17

10 The continual progress made in the
improvement of vegetables and animals
during the past few years. is somewhat
remarkable. The potato, for instance,
which, fifty years ago, was dug late in
the autumn, and only produced from
fifty to five hundred bushels to the acre,
has been altered by ingenious and cx-
pcricnccd breeders several times. each
breeder producing potato which yield
ed twice as much and ripcned two weeks
earlier than the preceding variety. The
latest improvement, made by Il Char
lotte man, gives a potato which, it is
well known, yields one hundred and
twenty-eight thousand bushels to the
acre and is ripe twenty-sevcn weeks and
four days before ii is planted. But the
potato is not the only fruit which i'm
proves in skilful hands. Even the con-
sentative hen has Yielded TO manifest
destiny. 1t has been several times OBJ
served by scientific poultry owners that
the hen produces but one egg a day and
is not ''dead sire" at that. Now. this is
rather slow work for an age of steam
and tclegraphs, land naturally efforts have
been made to persuade the hen to work
faster. A few isolated instances have
occurred and are well known where GER
tain able hens have produced two eggs
on Sundays. a breeder by the name
of old Grimes had blue hen which
could perform this feat. But Of course
this was too slight an improvement to
satisfy cooks, skunks, and other large
consumers of eggs. The hen-pcrsuadcr
was finally invented. This, as is well
known, is completely effective in Undue
ing the ambitious hen TO convert her
selfinto eggs in few hours, leaving on
ly bill and few tail-fcathcrs TO rep
resent the hiddy. But it is notorious
to the simplest comprehension that these
remains, uncomnectcd by an intervening
body, are utterly useless for the pur-
poses of a hen, whose future usefulness
thus becomes zero. And if the per-
suader were fastened to every hen il is
obvious that all roosters would become
hopeless widowcrs, which would be a
scandalous and unprecedented state of
things. Thus the usefulness Of the hen
pcrsuadcr is confined to eases where a
e,t11ot Il 1.l L., Il
eggs finds the markets supplied only
with those which have acquired obicc-
tionable qualities by too long keeping
So breeders have devoted themselves TO
the invention of a hen which should pro-
duce more tnan one egg Oil week days.
1t is gratifying to be able to record that a
breeder in Lyndon, this state. has sue
ceedcd in solving the problem. He owns
| .".i.t, hens, i'i,1. Loot ,-e". laid u 1914
eggs. Now, allowing for last ycar NO.
ing leap year, this shows a daily
production oftwo whole eggs and eight
hundred and forty-eight nine hundred
and flfteenths of another egg This is a
substantial gain. But the Lyndon man
probably does not propose TO discontin-
tie his improvements until that fraction
al egg becomes an integral one. Three
eggs day from one hen will vastly in
crease the value of gallinaccous proper
ty, and the Lyndon man will doubtless
reap the large fortune which his inge-
nuity and success deserve. We would
state that the evidence OF this remarka-
BILE improvement in hens rests upon the
word of this Lyndon man alone, but,
as any person who has ever read the
Lyndon Union is well aware. no lies
can originate in that truthful locality.