MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS. 71 



start? Not from what it had eaten or drunk, certainly. The 

 solution appears to lie in the fact which the best comparative 

 anatomists have recorded, that the bodies of most birds are 

 injected with air to a considerable extent. While the embryo 

 remains in the shell, its vascular parts are compressed, or 

 contain merely fluid for future nourishment, but as soon as 

 the lungs come fairly into play, air is made to inflate many 

 an unsuspected cavity, even, perhaps, to the tip of every fila- 

 ment of down. Chamaolion-like, the chick makes a good meal 

 on the atmosphere. A case in point may be seen when the 

 shell of a chrysalis is disrupted by the emerging butterfly; 

 and the process is so absolutely magical, that those who have 

 never witnessed it will be amply repaid for their trouble, if 

 they collect a few chrysalides (those of the gooseberry-moth, for 

 instance) out of their garden, and keep them under a tumbler 

 in their dressing-room, or on their side-board or writing-table, 

 or wherever they are most likely to secure the chance of being 

 in at the birth. The black, hairy, quick-running caterpillar, 

 which is so common, may be secured, fed upon common 

 groundsel, and will speedily be metamorphosed into a hand- 

 some tiger-moth. Ten minutes after it has burst its shelly 

 covering, : "' 



" Not all the Queen's horses, and all the Queen's men, 

 Could get tiger-moth into his shell again." 



It creeps out with a little moisture adhering to it, the wings 

 appear merely rudimental, soon it is seized with a shivering 

 fit, it grows larger with every successive attack of tremulous- 

 ness, the wings may be seen to extend as a curtain is let down, 

 the moisture is absorbed or evaporated, its breathing-places in 

 its sides are at work, it is thoroughly injected with air, and 

 none but those who know the whole truth would believe, on 

 seeing the narrow case by the side of the expanded insect, 

 that Euclid had been practically contradicted, and that the 

 greater had been contained within the less. The chicks of 



