Feathered Folk 339 



big head and very many pairs of small legs 

 treading in every direction. 



Normally hen eggs hatch in three weeks. 

 In very warm weather, the chicks may come 

 out in twenty days. If the eggs were old 

 before brooding began, they may require 

 twenty-two days. After that, though chicks 

 may be alive inside the shell, they are too 

 feeble to break out. A chick lies coiled into 

 the neatest possible oval inside the shell, and 

 pips it, that is to say breaks it, by pressing the 

 point of his beak strongly outward against it. 

 The whiff of air that goes through the first 

 pip and sets the chick to breathing, strengthens 

 it to turn itself slightly, so as to bring the 

 beak against a new space of shell. After 

 this is broken there is further turning;. Five 



O 



pips commonly break the shell in two unequal 

 cups. The beak comes somewhere towards 

 the middle. 



It is dangerous to try helping out a weakly 

 chick. The turning in the shell has a use 

 other than that of breaking out. Eggs are 

 lined throughout inside with a fine white 

 silken membrane. In hatching, blood-vessels 

 develop all through this membrane, and the 

 blood is oxygenated in them by means of air 

 coming through the pores of the shell, to 

 feed and form the growing embryo. These 

 blood-vessels center in a sort of umbilical 



