482 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Aug. 1 



The title of the book took hold of me at 

 once, and the first thing I did was to look at 

 the title-page and see when it was printed. 

 There was no date anywhere — not even to 

 the preface, and I believe I have scanned 

 every one of the 172 pages. But, strange to 

 tell, the pages in the book are not numbered. 

 A considerable part of it is occupied by tes- 

 timonials from some thirty or forty well- 

 known agricultural papers, or papers that 

 were well known thirty or forty years ago. 

 I suppose the author did get 45 rfiedals from 

 as many different agricultural societies (for 

 his "discovery" (?) ) in times past; but 

 when that was, nobodv can tell. I wrote the 

 lady who sent me the book, asking her 

 where it was advertised at $2.00 a copy. She 

 said she saw it in Montgomery Ward & Co.'s 

 catalog, but she said the price was only 25 

 cents. Well, if Montgomery Ward Sc Co. 

 are selling a book that is perhaps 40 years 

 old and letting people suppose it is a modern . 

 work, I do not tnink we should censure them 

 very much while they charge only 25 cents 

 for it. I think I can remember the time 

 when this Corbett did make quite a sensa- 

 tion by hatching chickens under a pile of 

 manure, around at different fairs or poultry 

 conventions. 



For some time I have had in mind some 

 plan by which sitting hens might be utilized. 

 Not very far from my own poultry-yard I 

 went into one belonging to a neighbor, and 

 found three or four sitting hens "holding 

 the fort," on different nests. When I re- 

 monstrated because these hens were not 

 promptly shut up to break them of the habit, 

 a young hopeful disclosed the fact that they 

 had been doing that way almost all summer. 

 Every night when they gathered the eggs 

 the sitting hens were pushed out of the way, 

 and allowed to go right back and sit on the 

 nest all night, and so on. And that remind- 

 ed me that, when I was in Northern Michi- 

 gan, I saw a statement in a paper about how 

 much money a bee-keeper's wife had receiv- 

 ed during the winter from a small flock of 

 hens. I paid them a visit and stayed there 

 over night. In the morning I asked per- 

 mission to review the poultry-houses, and 

 found out incidentally that they, too, were 

 allowing sitting hens to occupy the nests 

 week after week, and perhaps month after 

 month, because nobody had time to shut 

 them up and look after them; and my im- 

 pression is that thousands of dollars are wast- 

 ed every year in the United States by letting 

 hens sit, you might say, pretty much all 

 summer, without natching any chickens or 

 doing anybody any good. • 



How can we break up a sitting hen, and 



fet her to laying on short notice? This 

 2.00 book that sells for 25 cents has one solu- 

 tion of the problem. Put your eggs into a 

 manure incubator or any other kind of in- 

 cubator, for that matter; and when they are 

 pretty nearly ready to hatch, say six days or 

 less before hatching, give fifteen or twenty 

 of them to one of these tenacious, persistent 

 sitters. It will do the business, -for I have 

 tried it. Some of you may remember that I 



gave an incubatorful of chickens to a hen 

 that had been wanting to sit only about one 

 day. She cared for the chickens all right, 

 and lost scarcely one of them. Now, this is 

 one way of getting a sitting hen into the 

 harness and doing something; and if you 

 happen to have a sittino- hen on hand you 

 can make her take the place of a brooder — 

 that is, in the summer time or in a warm 

 climate. 



There are several other valuable and in- 

 teresting points in this $2.00 book that sells 

 for 25 cents; and I do not know but it will 

 pay you to send 25 cents to Montgomery 

 vVard & Co. and get it. It seems a little 

 funny that a book that made such a great 

 stir in the world years ago has dropped out 

 of sight entirely, and nobody seems to know 

 any thing about it now. I wonder if some 

 of the great secrets and systems of the pres- 

 ent day may not be lost and forgotten in a 

 short time. 



By the way, friends, a lot of these poultry 

 secrets have no date on them. Yes, many 

 of the catalogs of poultrymen are without 

 date. In our own printing-office I have re- 

 peatedly declared that every thing that 

 comes off from our presses must have some 

 date to tell when it was written and printed. 

 The great throng of humanity that is now 

 "wanting to know " has a good honest right 

 to demand when and where such wonderful 

 things were studied out and given to the 

 world — especially the when. Who wants to 

 waste time on some document without know- 

 in^ whether it is one year old or forty? 



The way in which you get $500 for the 

 product of twelve hens is to set every egg, 

 as fast as laid, in the stable-manure incuba- 

 tor. If the twelve hens lay, say, 150 eggs 

 apiece, and you have good luck with your 

 stable-manure hatcher, you ought to have 

 about 1200 chickens at the end of the season. 

 And it will not be a difficult matter to get 

 $.500 for them, even if you rear only common 

 stock. But I think one of our modern incu- 

 bators would be found a much better invest- 

 ment than the manure-pile arrangement. 

 When I was about ten years old I remember 

 getting a book out of our Sunday-school li- 

 brary that told about hatching chickens suc- 

 cessfully with the heat of fermenting ma- 

 nure; so there is no question but that it can 

 be done. But practical demonstration has 

 shown that the amount of supervision re- 

 quired is very much more than is needed witii 

 the modern incubator. 



HOW TO TELL WHETHER EGGS ARE GOING Td 

 HATCH; SEE PAGE 4.50 OF OUR LAST ISSUE. 



I have lost a good many chickens myself, 

 and 1 suppose others have lost thousands, by 

 taking it tor granted that the eggs were not 

 good on the 22d or 23d day of incubation. I 

 read of a man who dumped out on the com- 

 post-heap an incubatorful of eggs, thinking 

 there was no use of waiting any longer; 

 when, had he been a little patient, and used 

 common sense, he might have had a good 

 hatch. For instance, a hen with a dozen 

 eggs had not hatched a chicken on the 2;M 



