Aagiiit 1 , 1S05. 3 



JOUENAL OF HOBTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAKDENEIl. 



99 



Heatini; a GuEKNiimsK, Vineuv, and Stove (.in (Hil Subncriber). — To 

 boat tbn-e huuNCK HI fnut by Vi you wnuld roquiru a builur fibout 2 feet iu 

 Ifn^tb, 1111(1 (limi'iisioiisof tiropla(.'t>,13iiK.'lius wUlcimU thu sainu in beigUt. 

 A tfiKldlu-btick of 'Mi inches In loDt^b would do, but very hiiiall boilurs urn 

 OGOuoiiiit'u) only iit Ibi- lirst piu-clmHci. You do not tull uh whether your 

 houses lire to hv li'jiii-tcj's, or spmi-rdofrd, or wliotluT tbe viin>ry is to bo 

 forced eurly. For a Icuii-to houso you would ueisd from 121) to 130 toot 

 of four-inch iiipt*. I"or iv vinurj' to couuuoiioi^ in Kovciubcr or Docombur 

 you would ruiiuiro ns much. To bcniu in tbo oud of February, souio 

 90 foot \voul<l do. I'or thu f/ronnhousu (ID fnct »t h>ast would ho roquirud 

 to kcrp out frost, imd from UU foot if you wishud tlio Iiousl- to bo from 45 

 to M' in wiator. Vou Iiiul bettor err on thu safe sido and have moro 

 Instead of less, as tbo It^ss boat tht>re is in tho individual pipe, to keep a 

 reummto temperature, tbo better it will bo for all things gi'owii iu the 

 house. The positiim of tho boibn- is also a matter of importance; sup- 

 potting the stove to be iu tho couti'o, thu boiler huU beat be phiocd near 

 that bouse. 



Warted Vine Leavks (Wvt. /.^tnI.— Tbo warts ou tho back of thelcavoa 

 nrc! prodxioed partly by a damp border, hut cbietly by n oloso moist atmo- 

 splieve. N'otbiiii; wilt remove those affected tbih scusou. More air and 

 boat may prevout anything of tho kind next year. The spider huH no- 

 thing to do with it. 



FiNTOjioLooicAii WoiiK (d. O.). — Humphroy's and Wostwood's " British 



Moths and thoir Transformations" given all the IJritish Hpocies known nt 



i tlip time of puhli('ation. with the caturi)illars ; also JIumphrey'K *' Britiuh 



Moths" and Morris's "British Moths." hut all those works contain tho 



5Ii(rrolcpidoptora, none being restricted to the families you name. — W. 



Names of Plants, &c. {Hyuon Green). — Erodiuui moschatimi ; Excelsior 

 Marrow Pea. (.S. T.). — Wo are son"y to trouble you again, but your letter 

 ilid not reach us along with tho truit, and the connection between tho 

 two was consequently lost. (('. P.).— 1, Galoopsis ladannm ; 2, Galeopsis 

 tetrahit. (G. W. J.).— Vlmmora alba. (.S. -ff.).— 1, Galium verum ; 2, Por- 

 tulaca oleracea. 



METEOROLOGICiVL OBSERVATIONS in the Suburbs of Loudon for the Week ending July 2nth. 



POULTRY. BEE, and HOUSEHOLD CHRONICLE. 



ai;tificl\l incubation. 



I THINK it possible that some of your readers may like to 

 hear the record of a young poultry fancier's failiu'es and suc- 

 cesses. For three or four years I had kept a few fowls, but my 

 supply of esgs and ]ioultry was so scanty and precarious that 

 I balanced for some time whether I should attend to them 

 personally myself, or give them up altogether. At the begin- 

 ning of last year for live months I bad not had a single egg. I 

 then purcha.sed Mrs. Fergusson Blair's " Henwife," and followed 

 her directions as to a more generous and regular system of 

 feeding. The result was that I quickly had a fah' supply of 

 eggs, which went on continually increasing. I purchased a 

 few pure-bred fowls at the Birmingham monthly sales, and 

 procured some first-rate sittings of eggs from friends at a 

 distance. I had tolerably good luck with them, and sent 

 three pens of birds to the Birmingham Show last November, 

 putting a guinea a-head on them. They were all sold the first 

 day, and I replaced them with other birds at the same price, 

 so as to give myself a change of breed. At the close of the 

 year I fomul that my expenses had been £49, and my receipts 

 (including the home-eousumptiou at market price), had been 

 ie-18 1.5s. 



At the beginning of this year I had six cocks and about fifty 

 bens and pullets. My supply of eggs never failed. I had four 

 or five dozen weekly, even when the gi-oimd was covered with 

 snow ; but my early sittings were almost all failures, and both 

 my own eggs, and those I purchased, brought forth miserably 

 small broods ; and even those small broods were decimated 

 by the weather and accidents. As I had seen incubators 

 praised and advertised in your columns, I determined last 

 Easter, being in London, to buy one. I set this to work im- 

 mediately on my return, in the beginning of May. In the 

 first week of that month I placed forty eggs iu the "incubator, 

 and set five hens at the same time. Day and night I watched 

 the incubator ; but I could not keep the thermometer from 

 rising sometimes to 11'2'', and at auother sinking to 8.5° or 90°. 

 Most anxiously, as the twenty-first day di-ew near, did I listen 

 for auy soimd of Ufe. but in vain. Day after day, as the chicks 

 became due, did I watch and turn the eggs ; biit when my five 

 natural hatchings had succeeded, two bringing forth every egg 

 in their nests, I broke one by one all the forty eggs. They 

 all showed the same appearance, oue-third being empty, anil 

 the rest without any signs of a living chick, but also without 

 any offensive smell. This has been a great disappointment, i 

 and I shall be glad to hear from any amateur how far they ' 

 have succeeded with an incubator. Mine was constructed to | 

 bum a new lamp with artificial gas, from naptha or some like | 



spirit. It consumed two gallons (price 12k.), in twenty-eight 

 days ; so that, even if I bad succeeded, the cost of inculiation 

 was something considerable. My idea in ordering the incu- 

 bator was to try the experiment now, and, if tolerably successful, 

 to set it to work early next year with my tirst sittings, so as to 

 give me iin additional chance of early chickens ; but if I cannot 

 make it succeed in May, how can I expect it to answer in 

 Februai7 ? I have inquired for some work on incubation, but 

 can hear of none, and I cannot tell from what cause my recent 

 experiment failed. I have never met with any one who has 

 tried an incubator, so that I have no means of judging whether 

 I should have better luck next time. Should you insert this 

 letter in your .Journal it might bring some answer as a guide 

 t» a future trial, othenvise I must own my previous experience 

 has given me but little encoviragement to ti-y again. — A Countkt 

 Pahsox. 



[The letter which we print from " A CorNTEY P.iKSON," is 

 that which we some time since promised to answer next week. 

 It wiU, probably, seem to our correspondent, that the next 

 week is Uke the schoolboy's "to-morrow," or the debtor's 

 " very shortly." We have been waiting for every experiment 

 to be tried, and are now in a position to say an incubator will 

 be shortly offered to the public that has never failed. We have 

 not only closely examined the machine, but have seen the 

 results at every age. AVe have seen Ducks and chickens hatched 

 and hatching with a general average of thi-ee-tourtbs. They 

 liave come out strong, clean, healthy, well-formed chickens. 

 The heat is so regulated that the machine may be left for forty- 

 eight hours, if necessary, without the fear of variation. The 

 apphcation of it to the egg has been as nearly as possible 

 assimilated to the natural process of the ben, to which we at- 

 tribute the unusual strength and health of the chickens. The 

 artificial mother, hitherto the bugbear of all these inventions, 

 has really become a vei-y useful and successful thing. It is 

 patented, and will be immediately brought out by a company 

 (limited). 



The advantages of such a machine are incalcidable to the 

 poultry world, whether they be amateurs or dealers. We can 

 all recollect last year, the total absence of broody hens from 

 November till March ; and the consequent disappointments to 

 the first class, and loss to the second. It will be a most valu- 

 able adjimct to a yard, and our excellent correspondent, the 

 " CoONTRY Paeson," was acting on sound principles when he 

 put eggs under hens, and iu the machine on the same day. It 

 is one of the advantages of an invention hke this, that it 

 enables us to put a full brood to every hen. In Suixey, Sussex, 

 and the parts of Kent that devote themselves to poultry, these 

 machines will be of eminent service in increasing the supply 

 of early chickens, now so scarce and dear during the months 

 of April, May, and .June. 



Then- utOi'ty will not, however, be confined to poultry. They 



