88 AN EGG PAEM. 



either end, must be allowed to swing freely both ways 

 and therefore it has no stopper, but the shelves in the 

 covered yards, ?/, have stoppers to swing against, the 

 same as shown at i in Fig. 111. At either operating 

 room, no matter which, you can, by this very simple, 

 extremely durable and exceedingly cheap apparatus, 

 which, moreover, is not liable to get out of order, con- 

 trol every nest, either of sitting or laying bird, and oper- 

 ate any or all of the six feed shelves, and open or close 

 all of the sixteen gates. You can separate the layers as 

 a whole from the sitters in less than half a minute, and 

 at will separate each individual sitter from all the layers 

 and from all the other sitters. 



The employment of sitting hens in large numbers has 

 not hitherto been looked upon with favor, because 

 poultry keepers have not availed themselves of suitable 

 conveniences, having, in fact, not been aware of the cer- 

 tainty and precision with which the birds can be made 

 to do what you want them to do. A flock of two hun- 

 dred can be made to run two hundred feet in a minute, 

 either towards you or away from you or to the right or 

 the left, as you choose, and this without your having 

 spent any time at all to speak of in their preliminary 

 training. Just a few pulls of a wire or some other appli- 

 ance, while you are at the premises working at other 

 matters, and, lo and behold, they have a liberal educa- 

 tion, are highly accomplished, in fact, before yon know 

 it. You can then do just what you want with them by 

 merely reaching for a lever or a cord. The bugbear of sit- 

 ting hens has vanished into thin air. There is not a thing 

 expensive, excepting the six hundred and sixty feet of 

 shafts or pipe, and this, thanks to the cheapness of 

 modern iron goods, costs less than the price of one of 

 the ten incubators it displaces. The figure 4's and con- 

 nections seem rather costly, but made in quantities are 

 really quite inexpensive, and all the small wooden parts 



