496 



A HISTORY OF 



the difficulty of maintaining too numerous a 

 family. 



When the hen begins to sit, nothing can ex- 

 ceed her perseverance and patience ; she con- 

 tinues for some days immoveable ; and when 

 forced away by the importunities of hunger, 

 she quickly returns. Sometimes, also, her 

 eggs become too hot for her to bear, especially 

 if she be furnished with too warm a nest with- 

 in doors, for then she is obliged to leave them 

 to cool a little : thus the warmth of the nest 

 only retards incubation, and often puts the 

 brood a day or two back in the shell. While 

 the hen sits, she carefully turns her eggs, and 

 even removes them to different situations ; till 

 at length, in about three weeks, the young 

 brood begin to give signs of a desire to burst 

 their confinement. When by the repeated 

 efforts of their bill, which serves like a pioneer 

 on this occasion, they have broke themselves 

 a passage through the shell, the hen still con- 

 tinues to sit till all are excluded. The strongest 

 and best chickens generally are the first can- 

 didates for liberty : the weakest come behind, 

 and some even die in the shell. When all 

 are produced, she then leads them forth to pro- 

 vide for themselves. Her affection and her 

 pride seem then to alter her very nature, 

 and correct her imperfections. No longer 

 voracious or cowardly, she abstains from all 

 food that her young can swallow, and flies 

 boldly at every creature that she thinks is 

 Hkcly to do them mischief. Whatever the in- 

 vading animal be, she boldly attacks him; the 

 horse, the hog, or the mastiff. When march- 

 ing at the head of her little troop, she acts the 

 commander, and has a variety of notes to call 

 her numerous train to their food, or to warn 

 them of approaching danger. Upon one of 

 these occasions, I have seen the whole brood 

 run for security into the thickest part of a 

 hedge, when the hen herself ventured boldly 

 forth, and faced a fox that came for plunder. 

 With a good mastiff, however, we soon sent 

 the invader back to his retreat ; but not before 

 he had wounded the hen in several places. 



Ten or twelve chickens are the greatest 

 number that a good hen can rear and clutch 

 at a time ; but as this bears no proportion to 

 the number of her eggs, schemes have been 

 imagined to clutch all the eggs of a hen, and 

 thus turn her produce to the greatest advantage. 

 By these contrivances it has been obtained 



that a hen, that ordinarily produces but twelve 

 chickens in the year, is found to produce as 

 many chickens as eggs, and consequently often 

 above two hundred. The contrivance 1 mean 

 is the artificial method of hatching chickens in 

 stoves, as is practised at Grand Cairo; or in a 

 chymical elaboratory properly graduated, as 

 has been effected by Mr. Reaumur. At Grand 

 Cairo, they thus produce six or seven thousand 

 chickens at a time ; where, as they are brought 

 forth in their mild spring, which is warmer 

 than our summer, the young ones thrive with- 

 out clutching. But it is otherwise in our 

 colder and unequal climate ; the little animal 

 may, without much difficulty, be hatched from 

 the shell ; but they almost all perish when 

 excluded. To remedy this, Reaumur has 

 made use of a woollen hen, as he calls it ; 

 which was nothing more than putting the 

 young ones in a warm basket, and clapping 

 over them a thick woollen canopy. I should 

 think a much better substitute might be found; 

 and this from among the species themselves. 

 Capons may very easily be taught to clutch a 

 fresh brood of chickens throughout the year ; 

 so that when one little colony is thus reared, 

 another may be brought to succeed it. Nothing 

 is more common than to see capons thas em- 

 ployed ; and the manner of teaching them is 

 this : first the capon is made very tatne, so as 

 to feed from one's hand ; then, about evening, 

 they pluck the feathers off his breast, and rub 

 the bare skin with nettles ; they then put the 

 chickens to him, which presently run under 

 his breast and belly, and probably rubbing his 

 bare skin gently with their heads allay the 

 stinging pain which the nettles had just pro- 

 duced. This is repeated for two or three 

 nights, till the animal takes an affection to the 

 chickens that have thus given him relief, and 

 continues to give them the protection they 

 seek for : perhaps also the querulous voice of 

 the chickens may be pleasant to him in misery, 

 and invite him to succour the distressed. He 

 from that time brings up a brood of chickens 

 like a hen, clutching them, feeding them, 

 clucking, and performing all the functions of 

 the tenderest parent. A capon once accus- 

 tomed to this service, will not ^ive over; but 

 when one brood is grown up he :tiay have ano- 

 thernearly hatched putunderhim, which he will 

 treat with thesametendernesshe did the former. 

 The cock, from his salaciousness, is allow- 



