ARTIFICIAL HATCHING. 117 



incubator, so called from water being the merlium by 

 which an even temperature was secured. From that 

 time to the present various spurts have been made 

 to make it commercially a success, but these have only 

 partially succeeded, as in England it is used mainly 

 for hatchino^ the eg-ffs of game that are distm'bed 

 in the hay-fields, and as a fancy amusement. In 

 America great efforts have been made in the same 

 direction, but w^ith results similar to those in England. 

 Mr. Halsted, who seems to be recoo^nised as the orreat 

 authority there, being the inventor of their great prize- 

 taking machine, winds up an exhaustive paper, written 

 in 1870, with the advice, that, owing to the difficulties 

 and ready susceptibility of the eggs to be injured by any 

 imperfection in the hatching, it is best to let the hens sit 

 on them for the first three days. But this is admitting 

 that the incubators are fiir from perfect, as they cannot 

 be considered a success as long as it is necessary to 

 do this. 



It was left for Ostrich -farmers, who could easily 

 observe the habits of the parent birds, to define the 

 amount and kind of help that the parents give to the 

 chick when it is unable to escape unaided from the shell, 

 and to ourselves to discover the means of telling when 

 that time had arrived; and the great profits, that we 

 clearly saw would accrue from the successful hatching 



