ART1FICL\L HATCHING. 113 



uumber. Most of the superiuteudeuts, if not aU, are Copts. 

 The proprietors pay a tax to the Goverument. The maamal is 

 eonstrueted of burnt or sun dried bricks, and consists of two 

 parallel rows of small ovens and cells for fire, divided by a 

 narrow, vaulted passage ; each oven being about nine or ten feet 

 long, eight feet wide, and five or six feet high, and having above 

 it a vaulted fire-cell of the same size or rather less in height. 

 Each oven communicates with the passage by an aperture large 

 enough for a man to enter, and with its fire-cell by a similar 

 aperture. The fire-cells also, of the same row, communicate 

 with each other, and each has an aperture in its vault (for the 

 escape of the smoke), which is opened only occasionally. The 

 passage, too, has several such apertures in its vaulted roof. 

 The eggs are placed upon mats or straw, and one tier above 

 another, usually to the number of three tiers in the ovens ; and 

 burning ' yelleli ' (a fuel composed of the dung of animals, 

 mixed with chopped straw, and made into the form of round, flat 

 cakes) is placed upon the floors of the fire-cells above. The 

 entrance of the maamal is well closed. Before it are two or 

 three small chambers, for the attendant and the fuel, and the 

 chicks when newly hatched. The operation is performed only 

 during two or three months in the year — in the spring — earliest 

 in the most southern j)arts of the country. Each maamal in 

 general contains from twelve to twenty-four ovens, and receives 

 about a hundred and fifty thousand eggs during the annual 

 period of its continuing open, one-quarter or a third of which 

 number generaUy fail. The peasants of the neighbourhood 

 supply the eggs ; the attendant of the maamal examines them, 

 and afterwards usually gives one chicken for every two eggs that 

 he has received. In general only half the number of ovens are 

 used for the first ten days, and fires are lighted only in the fire- 

 cells above these. On the eleventh day these fires are put out 

 and others are Hglited in the other fire-cells, and fresh eggs 



