The chicken in China ever has been a mystery. Apparently it never grows more feathers than one can count at a distance of 20 yards, 1t eats pay ing stones more conedly than X Twain's goats in Palestine nibviéd gravel and from the nour: shment thus obtained it) eggs regularly, though, judged from its- appearance when it meets its inevitable end, it never acquires flesh. The reference, of course, is to the "China chicken," the bird that is as mysterious as its fellow resident, the "China pony." Yet almost as strange things happen with the Highly beed asterners when they are imported here. Hopeful enthusiasts, sighing for a really truly egg, go to much trouble and expense to secure Leghorns, Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, ete., build them houses which the China chicken's master would not despise for his own ase, feed them luxuriously—and do not get eggs because of the mysterious influence of the coun-A friend was lamenting this fact the other day. He said he had tried to bribe his aristocratic fowls with the best food in liberal
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