PACTS OBSERVED IN HATCHING. 151 



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 subsidedpfhe 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- 



