doe always eating her young ones was one of the evils to be dreaded by
our interference.

I suppose profit is to be made by keeping them, or tame rabbits would
not be placed in the poulterers' shops by the side of ducks and
chickens, but we are quite at a loss to know how it is accomplished.
It did not much matter in a pecuniary point of view, as it was very
doubtful if the children's pets would ever have died for the benefit
of the dinner-table, and I only insert this chapter for the purpose of
proving what I stated, viz.; that if a lady wishes her stock of any
kind to prosper, she must look after it herself. When I say prosper, I
mean without the expense being double the value of the produce she
would receive from her "four-acre farm."

We did not enter these disasters in our housekeeping book, it went
under the title of children's expenses. For my own part, I am disposed
to think that it must always be expensive to keep live stock of any
kind for which all the food has to be purchased. Had we continued to
keep our fowls in the yard, I am convinced they would have brought us
little or no profit; but the grass, worms, and other things they found
for themselves in the field, half supplied them in food, as well as
keeping them healthy. We had not one death among our poultry from
disease in the six months of which I have been relating this
experience of our farming.

Our next venture proved more prosperous than the rabbits, and will be
related in the following chapter.


CHAPTER IX.