To make the liens lay all through the winter, mix poWilered oyster-shells and slate, or decomposed schistus with their food. The lime in the oyster shells is necessary to form the shells of the eggs, and the slate improves their quality and flavor.
The following statistics on poultry and eggs drawn from the Patent Office Re ports for 1847 and 1848 have some in terest. It is stated that a bushel of corn will last twice as long for hens as a bushel of buckwheat, but the latter will make hens lay eggs more than any other grain, and the profit overbalance the cost. The number of eggs sent to market and con sumed is very great. In the year 1846 it is said that 3,000,000 were packed and sent from Cincinnati in the spring. A single canal boat is noticed in a Rochester, paper as on her way to Albany with 239 barrels of eggs, each barrel containing 90 dozen, which would thus give 258,120 dozen eggs. In France it is stated that 7,250,000,000 eggs are annually used, of which Paris consumes about 120,000,000. The importation of eggs from France by England amounted in 183S in value to nearly $1,000,000, and the annual average amount is estimated at 100,000,000 of eggs. The amount of money invested in poultry in England is supposed to be not short of £8,000,000.
In Bixio's Journal d'Agriculture Pra tique et Jardinago for April, 1848, we And a statement of the poultry and eggS of France alluding to actual statistics, he says : We have found 190,000 fowls for 85,685 inhabitants ; and these 190,000 fowls give annually a product of 14,400,000 eggs, or 166 eggs to a person a year. Ex tending this calculation to the whole of France, he says : We find that the pro portion of population to the number of fowls is that of 1 to 440. Now the popu
lation of France, according to the last census, was 34,230,178 inhabitants, and thus it will follow that, in the actual state of affairs, France feeds, by methods evi dently defective, 47,938,628 fowls, which at. 120 eggs each for a year, will give 5,752,635,360 eggs, which, at 4 francs per i 100, is equal to 230,100,414 francs, equal to $46,021,082 80, (above forty-six mil lions of dollars, allowing 20 cents to the franc.) Adding the excess of 30 eggs per fowl, as the result of artificial heat, there would be 150 eggs per fowl, (12 fowls, placed in a little court without any other heat than from that of manure, laid each 153 eggs, on an average, in 1846 ;) this would give a general total of 3,396,931,400 eggs, of the value of 287,631,768 francs more, (equal to 27,000,000 of dollars.) We have heretofore adverted to the vast number of eggs consumed in our coun try. We find a variety of estimates and it is evident that in many sections or the country both the amount of fowl rais ed and eggs consumed is very much larger than in others. In one day, from Cincin nati, Ohio, it is stated in one of the pub lic journals, there were shipped 500 bar-, rels containing 47,000 dozen of eggs. In some of the States, the poultry business appears to be much on the increase. In the state of New York, the Opening of the Erie Railroad has had the effect of in creasing the production of poultry and eggs to an incredible extent—a new mar ket being found in the middle counties of this state, to supply the wants of half a million of people in this city.