THE COCK. 



63 



If left entirely to herself, the hen would 

 seldom lay above twenty eggs in the same 

 nest, without attempting to hatch them : but 

 in proportion as she lays her eggs are removed ; 

 and she continues to lay, vainly hoping to in- 

 crease the number. In the wild state the hen 

 seldom lays above fifteen eggs ; but then her 

 provision is more difficultly obtained, and she 

 is perhaps sensible of the difficulty of main- 

 taining too numerous a family. 



When the hen begins to sit, nothing can 

 exceed her perseverance and patience ; she 

 continues for some days immovable ; 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 within 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 si- 

 tuations ; till at length, in about three weeks, 

 the young brood begin to give signs of a de- 

 sire 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 continues to sit till all are exclu- 

 ded. The strongest and best chickens gene- 

 rally are the first candidates for liberty ; the 

 weakest come behind, and some even die in 

 the shell. When all are produced, she then 

 leads them forth to provide for themselves. 

 Her affection and her pride seem then to al- 

 ter her very nature, and correct her imperfec- 

 tions. 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 likely to do them mischief. 

 Whatever the invading animal be, she boldly 

 attacks him ; the horse, the hog, or the mas- 

 tiff. When marching at the head of her little 

 troop, she acts the commander, and has a va- 



housewife's mode is the reverse of this. She makes a 

 nest, or box, of stone, brick, or wood, and fills it with 

 clean long straw. By these means, less heat is genera- 

 ted by the hen, and that which is produced quickly, es- 

 capes in her occasional absences; the eggs are chilled 

 and addled, and frequent failures ensue in the expected 

 brood. To obviate this, the best mode is to put at the 

 bottom and sides of the boxes of the henhouse, a suffi- 

 cient quantity of fine, dry sand, or of coal or wood ashes, 

 lining them with a little well-broken dry grass, or 

 untwisted haybands, or moss, or bruised straw. Wood- 

 ashes have been found to be the best, as they produce the 

 effect of destroying the fleas by which poultry are so 

 much infested ; and that this will not be disagreeable to 

 them is evident from the propensity which they have to 

 roll in heaps of dust, or of ashes of any kind. An ex- 

 perienced rearer of poultry adopted the method above 

 described during a long course of years, and scarcely 

 ever met with a disappointment. 





riety 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, how- 

 ever, we soon sent the invader back to his re- 

 treat ; but not before he had wounded the her 

 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 advan- 

 tage. By these contrivances it has been ob- 

 tained that a hen, that ordinarily produces but 

 twelve chickens in the year, is found to pro- 

 duce as many chickens as eggs, and conse- 

 qently often above two hundred. The con- 

 trivance I mean is the artificial method of 

 hatching chickens in stoves, as is practised at 

 Grand Cairo; 1 or in a chemical 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 sum- 

 mer, the young ones thrive without 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 wollen 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 thus employed ; and the manner 

 of teaching them is this: first the capon is 

 made very tame, 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 produced. This is 

 repeated for two or three nights, till the ani- 

 mal takes an affection to the chickens that 

 have thus given him relief, and continues to 

 give them the protection they seek for: per- 



1 See a note on this subject in the chapter " On the 

 Incubation of Animals," vol. i. 



