Should you have sufficient space, Guinea fowls may be kept, as» although the eggs are smaller than the fowl egg, you will have many of them, for they commence laying in April or May and continue to do so the whole summer. They are of a very rich flavour. Guinea fowls will not bear confinement, being of a rambling disposition; consequently they must he carefully watched, or they will lay far away from home, in a hedgerow, perhaps, and remain absent until the hen returns for you to welcome her with her young brood.

It is a matter of impossibility to discover their nests; the only certain method is to watch the movements of the cock, for while the hen is laying his attention is very great, and where he is you may be certain of finding your eggs. As it is uncertain, from their rambling propensities, when they will take to sitting (they may sit late in the season, when the weather will be too cold for the chicks) it is advisable to secure some eggs early in the season and place them under a common hen; from eighteen to twenty eggs may be placed under a good-sized hen. You will, if fortunate, secure a brood of guinea chicks about the middle of June. They are very delicate, require great warmth, and careful feeding. Rice, boiled in milk until perfectly swelled, is an excellent food, as is also bread treated in the same manner. Many people treat the chick as they do the turkey chick, by giving it a few peppercorns as soon as hatched. The hens sit twenty-six days generally, so if you collect your eggs early in May, you will have a very early brood, with all the benefit of a long summer before them, so that they will be full-grown birds before the biting frosts of winter set in. They are inexpensive birds to keep, as, from rambling about constantly, they pretty well contrive to get their own living.

On seeing a Guinea fowl walking about, you would imagine it was quite a large bird: it has a most deceptive appearance, the feathers hanging much more loosely than the common fowl's. When plucked, they very seldom exceed the fowl in size. Some old friends of mine were frequently in the habit (when late in the season for pheasants) of serving young Guinea fowls as a substitute, and a very excellent one they were. Having taken the precaution to preserve some feathers from the tail of the cock pheasant, the Guinea hen, with its borrowed plumes, often did excellent duty for its more gaudily-plumed substitute. You can never induce them to roost in the fowl-house; as soon as dusk commences, you hear them calling to each other in that peculiar note, harsh, grating, like a wheel grinding, which is one reason some people assign for not keeping them. They generally roost in branches of trees, and, like boys playing "follow the leader " as soon as one mounts, the others follow in succession. There is little, if any, difference observable between the cock and hen bird; on a close inspection, you may see the helmet-shaped crest, with which their head is crowned, larger in the cock than in the hen, and her wattles are also different in colour and smaller, the cock's being blue and large, those of the hen red and small.