1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



483 



clay. With my egg-tester I was enabled to 

 see that every egg contained a live chicken. 

 It needs some practice to enable one to do 

 this. Fix your eye on the air-bubble (in the 

 egg-tester described, of course); and if you 

 watch long enough you will see a shadowy 

 movement where the chicken pushes up in- 

 to that air-bubble. As soon as you satisfy 

 yourself that the chicken is alive, take the 

 next egg, and so on. My twelve eggs were 

 due to natch on Tuesday, but not a chick 

 came out till Saturday, and then we found 

 eleven nice chicks from the dozen eggs. 

 The principal reason I can think of for ac- 

 counting for this delay in hatching was that 

 the hen did not seem to have sense enough 

 to roll the eggs around and keep them under 

 her feathers. She was off from her nest 

 more than hens generally are. In fact, she 

 was a sort of slipshod mother, and preferred 

 to be gadding about rather than attending to 

 business. I put a little yard around her nest 

 so she could not get very far away, but she 

 was out in her yard a good part of the time. 

 Now, here is another fact: Good healthy 

 eggs strongly fertile will stand a big lot of 

 neglect aside from variations in temperature. 

 Perhaps it is better to have an incubator that 

 keeps right at 103; but I am pretty well sat- 

 isfied that the average hen does not do that 

 nor come anywhere near it. Who knows 

 but that we shall eventually not only catch 

 up with the sitting hen, but beat her "at 

 her own game"? A friend of mine has just 

 come from the Panama canal, and he says 

 that modern sanitation has been the means 

 of making one of the most unhealthful spots 

 on the face of the earth pretty nearly a mod- 

 ern health resort. One can live there, and 

 be well and strong, as well as in most north- 

 ern localities. If science and skill can do 

 that, can't we hatch eggs as well as a sitting 

 hen? 



A. I. ROOT'S "bee-escape" FOR CHICKENS. 



The picture below makes it so plain that 

 hardly any explanation will be needed. 



THK "TRAP" THAT WILL LET THE FOWLS GET INTO THE 

 YARD BUT WILL NOT LET THE.M GET OUT. 



The materials for this trap are two'thin 

 pieces of soft pine. I say soft pine so that 



you can readily whittle out the curves. These 

 pieces may be 10 inches long, and 2'/2 or '.i 

 wide. Then you want two sticks, about an 

 inch square and 8 or 9 inches long. Nail 

 them together so that the width of the circle 

 where the hens pass through will be 6 or 7 

 inches. This space of 6 inches wide will let 

 a Leghorn hen through all right. The swing- 

 ing wires should be tinned, and large enough 

 so that the hen can not bend or spring them 

 easily when she wants to go through the op- 

 posite way. These wires are bent L-shaped, 

 or a little more than square at the corners. 

 The long arms should be curved a little where 

 the hen goes through, so as to indicate where 

 they are to push between the two wires. 

 Now drive a couple of staples about 2 inches 

 apart in the upper stick, and here comes in 

 my invention. If these wires moved out 

 squarely, like the lid of a box, a hen could 

 get through without much trouble either 

 way. But we want them so as to spread 

 apart as shown at the dotted line. To do 

 this, take an ordinary twist drill, and drill 

 diagonally into the upper stick. Push the 

 short end of the wires into these drill-holes, 

 and, if drilled rightly, as each wire is raised 

 it swings off out of the hen's way, and al- 

 lows her to go through easily. After she 

 passes out the wires drop back, just clearing 

 the nails partly driven into the bottom stick. 

 Now, when the fowl attempts to get back 

 through the trap the way she came in, the 

 lower ends of the wires spring under the 

 nail heads as you see. It is almost laughable 

 to see the hens go up and crowd with their 

 shoulders against the wires. After a while, 

 however, they seem to "catch on" to the 

 fact that this "golden gate," like death, lets 

 people out of the world but never lets them 

 get oack into it. 



TEMPERANCE. 



TEMPERANCE— DOES IT EVER DAMAGE A TOWN 

 OR CITY FINANCIALLY BV MAKING IT DRY? 



When I first thought of making a winter 

 home in Florida I selected Fort Myers, Lee 

 Co.; but on being told that it was a saloon 

 town and county I decided on Manatee Co. 

 Recently, however. Fort Myers has been 

 voted dry, and here is what the mayor re- 

 ports in regard to the result: 



From July 1, 1907, to July 1, 1908, there came before 

 him as mayor 136 men on eharsjes of being drunk. 

 From June 1, 1908, to June 30, 1909, the number was 38. 



These figures, he slates, will be borne out by the 

 records of the mayor's court, and are certainly a troo<i 

 showing for the " dry " side of the question. Again 

 he says, the money derived from the $3.00 stre^ t tax 

 amounted to $900, which is nearly &300 more than would 

 have been derived from the saloons. You can draw 

 your own conclusions as to whether or not the making 

 of the city " dry " has done damage financially or mor- 

 ally.— /^^ Myers Press. 



With such testimony as the above, is it not 

 ridiculous to claim tnat saloons ever help 

 business? Almost, if not all the towns and 

 cities in Ohio that have been made dry can 

 furnish a similar report; and for that matter 



