ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION. 263 



wanted, that the adoption of an immense egg chamber 

 holding many thousands of eggs and designed to be 

 entered by the attendants, one of whom is always on 

 duty night and day, a sitting room or waiting room 

 being conveniently near, and personal supervision taking 

 the place of or rather supplementing automatic regulat- 

 ors, will ultimately prevail, because proving the most 

 feasible and economical. 



From the year 1800 on, until about the middle of the 

 century, there was a lull in experimentation till the late 

 '60's and early J 70's, when in consequence of the rage in 

 this country for the introduced Asiatic and Mediterra- 

 nean breeds of fowls and the general interest in poultry 

 incited by the acquisition of these valuable races, there 

 were some half a dozen hatching machines invented and 

 put upon the market. Very crude affairs, though, they 

 were, which long ago went down the stream of time, 

 having however first served the useful purpose of offer- 

 ing hints for later inventors. The rage for incubators 

 culminated in the early '90's. The multitude of incuba- 

 tor patents on file, the size of the manufactories where 

 the principal machines are turned out, the extent of the 

 advertising thereof, the elegance and costliness of the 

 catalogs and the enormous sales effected, as well as the 

 time and ingenuity involved in experiments connected 

 with the improvement of the numerous styles of hatch- 

 ers, to say nothing of the time and care bestowed upon 

 them by the hopeful purchasers, can be realized only by 

 those who have made a broad survey of the matter. The 

 last ten years have been especially prolific in styles of 

 incubators. 



Curiously enough, the skill spent in contriving the 

 artificial brooders offered for sale has not kept pace with 

 that given to incubators, although the fact that it is 

 much easier to hatch chicks than to rear them has been 

 evident all along. The notion which customers have 



