A FARMYARD STORY.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 299, 22 August 1908, Page 2

A FARMYARD STORY.

New York, June 29. One of the New York dailies, which deciares that it gives its readers “ all the news that is fit to print,” published this morning a farmyard yarn which should rank with some of the best fish stories ever printed on either side of the Atlantic. Four years ago Mr Billings, a New Jersey farmer, put a setting of ducks’ eggs under a portly Plymouth . Rock hen. The youngducks took to the water immediately. At first, Mrs Plymouth Rock was hysterical, but grew to regard the conduct of her young with philosophical calmness. Mr Billings kept repeating the experiment till she took it as a matter of course that her children should jump into the water. This spring Mr Billings gave the hen some valuable game chicken eggs, which cost him a sovereign for thirteen. A week ag-o she came off the nest with tw’elve young swashbuckling chicks. She led them to the duckpond. They ran away. She seemed disgusted, and made the same fruitless journey every day last week. At ten o’clock yesterday .morning she led her dozen to the pond one by one, and pushed them into the water until all were drowned. Oddly enough, the farmer who tells the story himself comes from a village called Caldwell!