FACTS OBSERVED IN HATCHING. 15k 
on the ground-floor having one over it of precisely 
the same dimensions, namely, three feet in height, 
four or five in breadth, and twelve or fifteen in 
length. These have a round hole for an entrance 
of about.a foot and a half in diameter, wide enough 
for a man to creep through, and into each are put 
four or five thousand eggs. The number of rooms 
in one mamal varies from three to twelve ; and the 
building is adapted, of course, for hatching from 
forty to eighty thousand eggs, which are not laid 
on the bare brick floor of the oven, but upon a mat 
or bed of flax, or other nonconducting material. 
In each of the upper rooms is a fireplace for 
warming the lower room, the heat being communi- 
cated through a large hole in the centre. The fire- 
place is a sort of gutter, two inches deep and six 
wide, on the edge ‘of the floor, sometimes all round, 
but for the most part only on two of its sides. As 
wood or charcoal would make too quick a fire, they 
burn the dung of cows or camels, mixed with straw, 
formed into cakes and dried. The doors which 
open into the gallery serve for chimneys to let out 
the smoke, which finally.escapes through openings 
in the arch of the gallery itself. The fire in the 
gutters is only kept up, according to some, for an 
hour in the morning and an hour at night, which 
they call the dinner and supper of the chickens; 
while others say it is lighted four times a day. 
The difference probably depends on the tempera- 
ture of the weather. When the smoke of the fires 
has subsided, the openings into the gallery from the - 
several rooms are carefully stuffed with bundles of 
coarse tow, by which the heat is more effectually 
confined than it could be by a wooden door. 
When the fires have been continued for an in- 
definite number of days, eight, ten, or twelve, ac- 
cording to the weather, they are discontinued, the 
heat acquired by the ovens being then sufficient to 
finish the hatching, which requires, in all, twenty- 
