No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 273 



general purposes fowl, Las no use for an incubator. Or in plainer 

 words, is usually better off without one. Although the veriest tyro 

 may frequently have splendid success with an incubator, the fact 

 remains that the average individual will get better chicks and more 

 of them if he trusts incubation to the old hens instead of dividing 

 it between himself and a heated box. That artificial incubation 

 though is a success in the hands of skilled operators is proved by 

 the immense trade that has grown up in the last few years in d;iy 

 old chicks all of which are hatched artificially. The question of 

 artificial incubation though is too complex and too lengthy to enter 

 into this afternoon, except to mention that the reasons for failure 

 with a certain machine or machines may sometimes be obscure and 

 entirely unsuspected. I found one machine this season that had 

 always done well and which, upon investigation, was simply clogged 

 up with heavy spider webs having been stored on a dirty barn 

 floor. 



In conclusion, we heard here this afternoon testimony from half 

 a dozen of you that hens stealing their nests, usually made large 

 hatches. Then let us study the reasons therefor, for reasons theie 

 certainly be. For instance let us study the nest. Few of us know 

 how to copy the nests made by this hen. Usually an almost Hat 

 hollow in the ground with a few leaves or a little litter made by 

 tlie hen loosening the earth with her feet, pushing it to a ridge at 

 the sides, moving her breast bone in a circle and pulling in the 

 small amount of litter or lining with her bill. 



THE FAHMEK AND HIS RECREATION 



By ENDS H. HESS, Lancaster, Pa. 



The farmer is one of the prime factors in a nation's material 

 growth and development. His is the class that not merely manipu- 

 lates but produces the wealth; the class whose products if with- 

 held for but six months would cause starvation to the peoples of the 

 world ; the class that produces the braAvn and brain for the leaders 

 of all classes; and, with all, the class that is made the subject of 

 sport by the joker and cartoonist. 



A reverend gentleman in giving an address of welcome to a farmer 

 audience indiscreetly referred to the biblical fact of the first mur- 

 derer being a farmer. The respondent politely told him that only 

 half the truth was stated; that upon that farmer becoming a 

 murderer he was no longer tit to be a farmer and "Cain went and 

 built him a city." Ever since have the cities been the contaminating 

 and destroying influences of the world. 



We have never done business in Wall Street nor do we con- 

 template it. But if one goes to the clothier at present for some 

 garment he is told that all cotton goods have advanced in price on 

 18—7—1910 



