4 RENNIE'S MONTAGU. 
again. Are the eggs, then, covered these four and 
twenty hours to keep them warm? Put your hand 
upon them, and you will find them “cold as any stone.” 
Nay, more, you shall take one of these eggs, which 
you find covered before the bird begins to sit, and 
you shall immerse it for four and twenty hours in 
water; and if you put it back into the nest before 
the bird begins to sit, you will find that she will 
hatch it at the same time with the rest of the eggs. 
If, then, this egg will produce a bird after being 
four and twenty hours in the water; and if the 
other eggs (in the case of the waterhen) containing 
embryo chicks will produce birds after being left 
uncovered some hours by the mother, may we not 
venture to hazard a conjecture that the professor, 
somehow or other, has not exactly entered into the 
real notions of waterfowl for covering their eggs 
with dry hay when they leave the nest, both before 
and after they begin to sit ? 
I will here add an observation. “The Dab- 
chick,” says our professor, “ covers its eggs to keep 
them warm ; for the vicinity of the nest to moist 
plants, or to water, would certainly prove fatal to 
the embryo chicks, were she to leave the eggs for a 
moment without covering them.” But the wagtail 
will build her nest within a foot of the water, and 
yet she never covers the eggs when she leaves her 
nest. Now, the shell of the wagtail’s egg being 
much thinner than that of the dabchick, might one 
not be apt to infer that the egg of the wagtail 
would suffer sooner from cold than the egg of the 
dabchick ? 
