The Japanese., so noted for their wonderful development of dwarfed trees, are also the originators of the smallest fowls — the Bantams. Another interesting breed is called "Jumpers" or "Creepers." Their legs are so short that they are compelled to move by jumping.

The wild hen lays from eight to twelve white eggs in nests, seldom of better construction than a few dried leaves or grass scratched together in a secluded spot. It is said that "to every hen belongs an individual peculiarity in the form, color, and size of her egg, which never changes during her life-time, so long as she remains in health, and which is as well known to those who are in the habit of taking her produce, as the handwriting of their nearest acquaintance." We are told that the tame hen raises a brood of physically stronger offspring when allowed to select her own nesting place in some locality with natural surroundings.

The wild and the tame fowl alike eat a variety of foods, both animal and vegetable, but prefer the latter.

With reference to the habits and characteristics of this interesting domestic bird of our farm yards and orchards no words can describe them more aptly than those so delightfully written by Gail Hamilton, when she says: "A chicken is beautiful and round and full of cunning ways, but he has no resources for an emergency. He will lose his reckoning and be quite out at sea, though only ten steps from home. He never knows enough to turn a corner. All his intelligence is like light, moving only in straight lines. He is impetuous and timid, and has not the smallest presence of mind or sagacity to discern between friend and foe. He has no confidence in any earthly power that does not reside in an old hen. Her cluck will be followed to the last ditch, and to nothing else will he give heed.

I am afraid that the Interpreter was putting almost too fine a point upon it, when he had Christiana and her children into another room where was a hen and chickens, and bid them observe awhile. So one of the chickens went to a trough to drink, and every, time she drank she lifted up her head and her eyes toward heaven. 'See,' said he, 'what this little chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by receiving them with looking up.'

Doubtless the chick lifts her eyes toward heaven, but a close acquaintance with the race would put anything but acknowledgment in the act. A gratitude that thanks heaven for favors received, and then runs into a hole to prevent any other person from sharing the benefit of these favors, is a very questionable kind of gratitude, and certainly should be confined to the bipeds that wear feathers.

Yet if you take away selfishness from a chicken's moral make-up, and fatuity from his intellectual, you have a very chaining creature left. For, apart from their excessive greed, chickens seem to be affectionate. They have sweet, social ways.

They huddle together with fond, caressing chatter, and chirp soft lullabies. Their toilet performances are full of interest. They trim each others bills with great thoroughness and dexterity, much better, indeed, than they dress their own heads, for their bungling, awkward little claws make sad work of it.

It is as much as they can do to stand on two feet, and they naturally make several revolutions when they attempt to stand on one. Nothing can be more ludicrous than their early efforts to walk. They do not really walk. They sight their object, waver, balance, decide, and then tumble forward, stopping all in a heap as soon as the original impetus is lost — generally some way ahead of the place to which they wished to go.