I have been studying _The Young Poultry Keeper's Friend_ of late. If
there is anything I dislike and deplore, it is the possession of
knowledge which I cannot put to practical use. Having discovered an
interesting disease called Scaly Leg in the July number, I took the
magazine out into the poultry-yard and identified the malady on three
hens and a cock. Phoebe joined me in the diagnosis and we treated the
victims with a carbolic lotion and scrubbed them with vaseline.

As Phoebe and I grow wise in medical lore the case of Cannibal Ann
assumes a different aspect. As the bibulous man quaffs more and more
flagons of beer and wine when his daily food is ham, salt fish, and
cabbage, so does the hen avenge her wrongs of diet and woes of
environment. Cannibal Ann, herself, has, so far as we know, been raised
in a Christian manner and enjoyed all the advantages of modern methods;
but her maternal parent may have lived in some heathen poultry-yard which
was asphalted or bricked or flagged, so that she was debarred from
scratching in Mother Earth and was forced to eat her own shells in self-
defence.

* * *

The Square Baby is not particularly attracted by the poultry as a whole,
save when it is boiled with bacon or roasted with bread-sauce; but he is
much interested in the "invaleeds." Whenever Phoebe and I start for the
hospital with the tobacco-pills, the tin of paraffin, and the bottle of
oil, he is very much in evidence. Perhaps he has a natural leaning
toward the medical profession; at any rate, when pain and anguish wring
the brow, he is in close attendance upon the ministering angels.