On the most simple means of employing dead Animals. 339 



ground and lightly covered with eight or ten inches of straw or litter. 

 Soon a great number of flies pass throngh the straw and deposit their 

 eggs upon the animal matter. Some days after, the worms, hatched 

 and developed, replace almost all the animal matter which they have 

 devoured ; we find them mixed with a sort of mould and some mor- 

 sels of flesh or tendons; these are to be separated with the hand, and 

 all the mass of white worms and the mould with which they are mix- 

 ed, collected with a shovel and put into sacks, to be sent either to the 

 pheasantries or to the yards where they are employed. 



In the great heats of summer, it is useful to protect the bed of re- 

 mains, where the maggots are forming, from the warmth of the sun, 

 by means of straw matting or litter supported upon sticks a few feet 

 above the beds. 



Maggots take the place very advantageously of the eggs of ants, 

 not only for young pheasants, but likewise for raising turkies, little 

 chickens, and divers other domestic birds.* 



With these little worms may be raised nightingales, linnets, and 

 other birds which are fed upon insects. 



Fishers with the line consume great numbers of them in certain 

 localities, and often pay very high for them. One of the most use- 

 ful employments to which these maggots may be put, is to throw 

 them into fish ponds, where they are quickly devoured, and the fish 

 fatten very quickly upon them. With this aliment, two or three times 

 the number of fishes can be kept in the same pond, and eight or ten 

 times the produce obtained, for the want of nourishment alone di- 

 minishes the number of fishes, when amongst them there are not 

 found any voracious ones, and they are besides protected from the 



different animals which eat them. 



In order better to show the profit which the inhabitants of die 

 country may obtain from dead animals, we will give, as example, 

 the total value of a horse, by the easy operations which we have 

 pointed out. We have placed in the same table the indication of 

 the value of the same parts of a horse of rather large size, and in 

 good condition, as is often found in the country, which has perished 

 by accident. The weights of these dead bodies, result from a suffi- 

 cient number of experiments which we have had occasion to make 

 upon horses killed by the horse killers of Paris. 



* It is not proper to feed hens exclusively with them, as the eggs may contract a 

 bad taste. This inconvenience need not be feared, if we are careful to mix them 

 with grains or other vegetable aliment. 



