THEIR COLOUR, FORM, AND SEX. 103 



the raore remote cause being the same wise law of Providence, 

 through which, in the human race, more males are born into 

 the world than females, to meet the wear and tear of war, 

 labour, and accident. 



" Neither/'' as Mr. Bissell shrewdly suggests, " are these 

 two tests, viz., the shape of the Egg and the position of the 

 air-bubble, consistent with each other. Since I have been an 

 experimenter upon that subject," he says, " and my experience 

 is corroborative of all that you have said, I will just give you 

 the facts as they occurred in one or two instances out of a great 

 number of similar ones. 



" The fact of the situation of the air-bag being as varied in 

 a round Egg as in an oval or long one, seems to me, of itself, 

 to be fatal to the test by which we are told to distinguish the 

 sex of future chickens ; for if the round Egg produces a pullet, 

 and an Egg with the air-bag a little on one side produces the 

 same, it argues that all round Eggs should have the air-bag in 

 that position (the same argument applies to the long or oval 

 Egg), or one test contradicts the other. That such is not the 

 case, and that the position of the air-bag differs as much in a 

 long Egg as it does in a round, I need hardly assert, for the 

 doubt may be decided by the examination of a few Eggs by 

 the light of a candle. In hatching my Spanish Fowls, I was 

 careful to examine, and set none but round Eggs, with the air- 

 bag on one side, and if there is any truth in either principle, I 

 ought to have had all pullets ; but this, instead, is the result : 

 From thirteen Eggs selected as above stated, were hatched, in 

 June, ten chickens, which proved to be four cocks, six pullets ; 

 from eleven Eggs, set early in July, were produced six chick- 

 ens, viz., three cocks and three pullets ; from thirteen Eggs, 

 set in July, were produced eight chickens, viz., five cocks and 

 three pullets ; so that you have about equal numbers of either 

 sex from Eggs which were as like each other in form, size, and 



