300 AN EGG FARM. 



to the polished steel implement of to-day, every promis- 

 ing curve of mould board having been tried meanwhile, 

 until it is probable that the plows of a hundred years 

 hence will not be a whit better than those we have, 

 although it is likely that our descendants will propel 

 theirs in ways we cannot even guess. 



The incubator of the future will hold 15,000 or 30,000 

 eggs, or more, and will be large enough for the opera- 

 tors to go into. Perhaps the room will be quite high, 

 and the floor supporting the egg racks will be arranged 

 elevator style, so that it may be raised or lowered almost 

 instantly to secure the desired temperature, a graduated 

 scale on the wall showing how much the altitude must 

 be changed to change the heat to a degree or a fraction 

 of a degree. By relays of attendants, the heat, air and 

 moisture will be governed personally every hour and 

 every minute, instead of being left to blind machine reg- 

 ulation. Nothing but constant human supervision will 

 ever conquer the difficulties that mark the gull between 

 the best incubators and the mother bird for she is on 

 duty all the time. We are told that John Champion in 

 1770 used a room he could enter. He was the first 

 white " champion " of the large room plan, though this 

 had been exploited by people of another complexion for 

 hundreds and probably thousands of years previously. 

 The wheel will come full circle and the artificial incuba- 

 tion of the twentieth century will revert to the primitive 

 large apartment. 



Let us see how the large room for eggs and the wait- 

 ing room for the attendants, who keep constant watch 

 of all the conditions, can be combined with the electric 

 signal already in use by incubator operators to transmit 

 news of temperature from their machine to their office 

 or sleeping room, and with revolving fans such as have 

 already been adopted in the construction of at least one 

 mammoth incubator, and with a spraying machine to 



