DUCKWING GAME : THE SILVER GREY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 366, 8 May 1889, Page 4

DUCKWING GAME : THE SILVER GREY.

Of all our varieties of Game fowls none to our mind is so beautiful a bird as the Duckwing. We give Tan illustration of a Silver Grey Duckwing hen. To get good Duckwing cocks, breeders recommend mating a pure-bred Duckwing hen with a

good, bright, black-breasted red cock. In breeding for hens the Duckwings may be mated together, or a Duckvving cock with a good hard-feathered, partridge-coloured black-red hen. Black-red blood seems a necessity to get the brilliancy of plumage required in the be&t specimens of Duckw ings. The silver-grey Duckwing was at one time believed to be a cross from the silver-grey Dorking, but Mr Douglas, quoted in Lewis Wrights book, avers them to be pure Game. But owing to this prejudice he says that breeders got discouraged because the silvergrey Duckwings were passed over atshowsas being not pure in blood. He thus describes the cock : — Face red ; hackle right from the crown of the head a pure white, without the least dark streak ; back and shoulder-coverts anicesilvery white, running intoa black, with bluish cast at butts of shoulders ; saddle white like the hackle, with a beautiful welldefined bar of steel blue feathers on thB wing from which the whole class of these fowls are called Duckwings, being similar to the bar on the mallard's wing. The under parts of the body were black as well as the breast which had a slight blue cast. Tail black, with sickles sharp and fine, secondary sickles short, and of a green browny block appearance. Very little tail coverts are carried in this breed. The hens are of a quiet colour, the body being dark grey striped with silver slightly on most leathers, giving a laced appearance. The hackle is dark laced with silver, tail black, outer feathers plightly brown ; legs dark willow or black. This variety of Duckwing Mr Douglas says does not. require crossing to get the colours, being as he thinks a distinct variety. They were noted for their quickness and long endurance in fighting in the old cock-fighting days, being hard in the flesh and short in the feather. The variety of Duckwing most often seen in shows is the so-called yellow Duckwing, of which the hen has a bright salmon-i-ed red breast, and a tinge of straw colour pervading the white hackle of the cock. In this variety the legs are yellow or willow.

Exhausting the Soil. — "The soil," observes a writer, " must be regarded as a mine of fertility, which, like other mines, is exhaustible. Under continuous cropping or grazing the mine of fertility gradually becomes worked out ; and the first ot its essentials to succumb is phosphorus. Then resort must be had to what may be termed high-presaurefarming, a system under which the soil is artificially supplied with what the plant requires—is made, as it were, the vehicle whereby phosphorus and other indispensablo elements are presented to the plant. With this higher pressure farming British agriculturists are familiar enough. American and Australian farmers are raipidly drift tig in the same direction,; and an outcome of this revolution will be' a large and ever increasing demand fdr phosphatee."