eating; their plumage, in its kind, is perfect;
their flirtations and gambols on, under, and
over the water, are most amusing; and their
value as decoy-birds, on account of their
sonorous and unwearied quack, is second to
no other flat-foot in the world. Colonel
Hawker truly says that three French ducks,
like three Frenchmen, will make about as
much noise as a dozen English. French
geese are in little esteem; they are not a
fashionable dish. They are looked upon as
food for the common people, rather than for
the rich bourgeois, or for the gentleman with
a de before his name. The Parisian workman,
when he has a mind for a treat, buys at
a rotisseur's, or roaster's, a ready-roasted
joint of goose. From the baker's shop next
door he fetches sundry sous'-worth of bread.
He then enters a Commerce de Vins, or
wine-shop, protected, like the baker's, by
an outside front of strong iron bars, which
convert them into so many little fortresses,
and render each man's shop his citadel, in
case any popular outbreak should make the
multitude too desirous of a gratuitous supply
of the two principal articles of a Frenchman's
diet, bread and wine. The only stylish
morsel contained in a goose is the liver,
which may make its appearance in a paté,
especially when enlarged by disease to
unnatural dimensions, on any table, and which
the proudest nobleman of the legitimate party
may condescend to taste without losing
caste. To add to the French goose's
humiliations, its feathers are in but minor request.
Everybody sleeps either on wool mattresses,
straw beds, or, in the south, on sacks stuffed
with the husks of Indian corn. Feather beds
to lay over you in winter are very general
articles of chamber furniture, and very
comfortable when you are not restless, and
do not kick them off in the dead of the
night. But these are filled, not with goose-
feathers, but with eider-down.

Thirdly, the French domestic pigeons are
large, plump, and succulent, in their season.
Amongst them, birds of the colour, form, and
size of runts, are not unfrequent in tolerable
purity. Good carriers are to be found in
many of the large towns, especially the
seaports. But the electric telegraph has in
great part superseded them, and has
ruined their prospects as professional birds.
Other fancy pigeons are almost nonexistent.
Traces of turbits and trumpeters are to
be seen rarely, here and there. The
only poultry curiosity which the Jardin des
Plantes at Paris at present contains, are some
pure white silk-fowls, with good silky
topknots, also pure white. We may call them
silky-Polish, if we please, and very pretty
indeed they are. They would attract attention
in any exhibition where the mania of
the day did not blind amateurs to the merits
of all but one special breed.

This premised, it will be believed that we
were agreeably struck by the announcement
of a poster that on Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday, the twenty-sixth, twenty-
seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth of
October last, the Agricultural Society of
Boulogne-sur-Mer would give an exposition
of cereal grains, implements, plants for
forage, roots, vegetables, fruits, and "foreign
poultry." It is thus, in what may be called
frontier towns, that the first specimens of
transmarine taste are displayed, to find their
way gradually further inland. As
peculiarities of this exposition, it may be recorded
that the middle of one day, Saturday, from
twelve until three, was devoted to a public
six-monthly sitting, in which several useful
reports were read; that the admission during
all the four days was gratuitous; you had
nothing to do but to walk in, and behave
yourself respectably; and that the place of
exhibition was the library in the building
which contains the Boulogne Museum,—
two institutions to whose value, richness, and
convenience many a passing literary stranger
will cheerfully bear testimony.

Amongst other articles which made their
appearance in the great room of the library,
were the seed and fibre of the white-
blossomed flax: enormous red and yellow
beetroot, important hitherto for the sugar crop
in France, and big enough to serve as clubs
for the protection of the town from foreign
invasion; amongst these, were beet-root for
cows, the third crop this summer after rye
cut green, and flax; great variety of red and
yellow carrots, like enormous sticks of
vegetable barley-sugar; enormous drumhead
and red cabbages, solid enough to
serve as cannon-balls; specimens of oats,
wheat, rye, and escourgeon, or four-rowed
barley, in the straw, including some double-
kernelled bearded wheat, all tending to
calm the public mind touching any
possible scarcity of grain; and five tables
full of apples and pears, calculated to
make streams of water rush into incalculable
mouths.

The collection of stranger fowl, which
represented Birmingham and all England,
was small: let it not, therefore, be thought
unimportant. Twelve wicker-baskets
contained the whole. The favourite, perhaps,
were the drake and two Aylesbury ducks, so
delicate and sleepy that they looked as if
they longed to be boiled and served up with
white sauce to match their plumage. N.B.—
If you don't know the merits of boiled ducks,
we pity (without offence) your ignorance. A
pair of white turkeys gave general satisfaction;
and it was announced that their owner
had several couples to sell, at the not
extravagant price of thirty francs the couple. A
pair of yellow bantams required tight lacing
before they could have shown their faces in
the Midland Counties; but all the poultry
was far too novel a sight for native connoisseurs
to be over particular. Then there were
a pair of silver-spangled Polish—white fowls