1084 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



that we use, and which cost nothing except a little time and a 

 few nails, is just as good as any. It is simply a wooden box 

 large enough to hold a small kerosene lamp. There is a round 

 hole in the top as large as the top of the lamp chimney, and in 

 one side, high enough to come just opposite the flame, there is 

 an egg-shaped opening. The opposite side is hinged with leather 

 straps so that it can be used as a door to admit the lamp. Place 

 the lamp in the box, close the door, partially darken the room, 

 and hold the eggs, one at a time, between the thumb and fore- 

 finger, between the eye and the egg-shaped opening. 



A barren or non-fertile egg looks light and nearly clear when 

 viewed through the egg tester. A fertile egg will, at the fourth 

 or fifth day, show a small dark spot, with tiny veins radiating 

 from it. In the live embryo the veins will be distinct ; in the 

 dead one they will appear broken and cloudy. The eggs that 

 contain dead embryos should be removed, as they will soon rot 

 and become very offensive. From the fifteenth day onward the 

 eggs which contain living chicks look dark, except the space oc- 

 cupied by the air bubbles at the large end. When the air bub- 

 ble occupies an unusually large amount of space, and is fairly 

 on one side, the chick is generally dead, and the sooner it is out 

 of the nest the better. 



Artificial Incubation. The ancient Egyptians hatched 

 and raised chickens successfully by artificial means, but in our 

 day and generation all such attempts have, until within the past 

 few years, proved failures, or at best but partial successes. The 

 first incubators offered to the public in this country were not 

 practical enough to meet the wants of poultry raisers, but the 

 demand for an incubator that would "beat the old hen" was 

 so great that inventive genius was stimulated, and as a result 

 there are at present some half a dozen different kinds of incu- 

 bators that will if the manufacturers' directions are carefully 

 and intelligently followed hatch a larger per cent of the fertile 

 eggs than the hens. These incubators are rapidly coming into 

 use, arid the time is not far distant when no poultry raiser who 

 wishes to raise over two or three hundred early chicks will 

 consider his outfit complete without one or more incubators. 



