WHO'S WHO IN THE POULTRY WORLD.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1085, 25 March 1911, Page 10

WHO'S WHO IN THE POULTRY WORLD.

(Prom tho "N.Z. Poultry Journal.") H. LEGER, Levin. Mr. Lcger wears well. Ho lias started more beginners in poultry culture than most breeders among lis. Pages could be filled with the appreciative utterances wo have hoard about him. If a man sends two pounds for birds, Mr. Lcger wilt send fifty shillings' value. Ho works hard, and goes straight. It is now many years sinco ho caught the hen fever, and we nearly lost llim from our list. Australia attracted liim, and as ho himself remarked to us, "I had made up my mind to go lien fanning, and took train ono day in 1894 from tlio Melbourne Station and went 30 miles out to St. Albans to see a fivcacro section advertised for £40. Their terms were ss. down and ss. weekly. It was two miles from a station closo to the railway line, and flat; soil, medium. A great reservoir stood in tlio middlo of it and a tall, picturesque air-chopper —Mr. Leger's style of designating 1 a windmill—pumped water into it. It was tho time of tho gren/ depression. .''.Didn't you buy it?" wo remarked. "Noj" he : replied, "I liadn't ss. to pay the deposit." It was not until three years after that Mr. Legcr looked, at another section near to James Stewart's, Berqwra, but tho hot, dry climate, tho absence of green feed and pure, fresh water mado him turn his attention to New Zealand. It is a treat to hear Sir. Leger talk, and wo always felt grateful to his excellent wife for allowing us, till two in the morning, to cliseuss poultry matters. Mr. Leger next tried' tho Petono hills, but hero he jocularly remarked "the law of gravitation counts not a straw against boreas—tlio north wind. It used to lift tlio hens off tho planet—shuffling them up like a handkerchief torn from a clothes-line. 'When 1 fed tho fowls tho wheat would gravitate horizontally and travel for several miles olf tho farm, so I gave' up, and now vou find mo nestling down in tho fertile loam of Levin—tho sunny queen of tlio N—." "No, you don't," wo interjected, "Canterbury is." Mr. Legcr camo into prominence as winner of the first Blenheim egg-laying test. It gavo him a great lift. /That year there was no other poultrymon in Now Zealand but Leger, and. no liens like Leger liens. Though he has. not achieved a similar success,"ho has produced stock, from which have been raised many pens that havo been in tho prize-money.