56 



AX EGG FARM. 



grade. Very often poultry men find chickens dead in the 

 shell. Some die after the egg has been sat upon eighteen, 

 nineteen, or twenty days, the chicks appearing full size 

 and ready to burst the shell ; some, however, die on the 

 twelfth or fifteenth day, and others on the fifth or sixth 

 day. In some cases, it appears as though the germinal 

 speck just started in its growth and then was nipped in 

 the bud. When a poultry man of an inquiring turn of 

 mind breaks the eggs that have failed to hatch, he finds 

 germs in every stage of growth, from the first trace of 

 the development of organization up to the apparently 

 perfectly formed chick, which looks as if all it had to 



FIG. 18. STKIKER FOll FEED SHELF. 



do was to break the shell and be warmed and dried, in 

 order to run around and pick up its own living. There 

 are very many cases of arrested development and death 

 in the shell at different stages that cannot be attributed 

 to any treatment the eggs have received after they were 

 put under the sitting hen or into the incubator, for other 

 eggs, subjected to exactly the same influences, hatched 

 and produced vigorous chickens. Now, what is the rea- 

 son for all this? Surely is it not the character which 

 the egg itself received from the hen that laid it or the 

 sire that fertilized it, or both ? There is such a thing 

 as inherited weakness, which may characterize an egg 



