114 OSTRICH-FARMING IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



placed in the ovens below these last. On the following day 

 some of the eg^s in the former ovens are removed and placed on 

 the floor of the fire-cells above, where tlie fires have been extin- 

 guished. The general heat maintained during the process is 

 from 100^ to lOo*^ of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The manager, 

 having been accustomed to this art from his youth, knows from 

 his long experience the exact temperature that is required for 

 the success of the operation, without having any instrument, like 

 our thermometer, to guide him. -On the twentieth day some of 

 the eggs first put in are hatched ; but most on the twenty-first 

 day — that is, after the same period as is required in the case of 

 natural incubation. The weaker of the chickens are j)laced in 

 the passage : the rest in the innermost of the interior apart- 

 ments, where they remain a day or two before they are given to 

 the persons to whom they are due. When the eggs first jjlaced 

 are hatched, and the second supply half hatched, the ovens in 

 which the former were placed, and which are now vacant, receive 

 the third supply ; and in like manner, when the second supply 

 is hatched, a fourth is introduced in their place." 



The descriptions by other writers on Egypt agree 

 in the main with this ; one point in which they differ, 

 and that one on which if Lane was correct would 

 have puzzled ns much, is where he says the eggs 

 are placed tier upon tier to the height of three tiers ; 

 now if this was the case the lower and middle tier w^ould 

 have a superincumbent mass of cold matter on the top of 

 the egg) where the vital germ is, and which our experience 

 would tell us would be fatal. But other writers say the 

 eggs are placed simply in the ovens on some non-conduct- 

 ing substance ; this is as we should have supposed, for the 



