CHAPTER VI 



INCUBATION 



" TNCUBATION means lying upon. The brooding 

 X bird does in fact crouch or lie upon her eggs, 

 warming them with the heat of her body for a num- 

 ber of days with indefatigable patience. When a 

 hen wishes to set, 1 she makes it known by her re- 

 peated duckings, little cries of maternal anxiety, by 

 her ruffled feathers, her restless movements, and par- 

 ticularly by the perseverance with which she stays 

 on the nest, even when it has no eggs, where she has 

 been in the habit of laying. 



"Some hens with wandering dispositions go back 

 to the instincts of their wild race. They leave the 

 hen-house and seek a hedge or thicket, where they se- 

 lect a hiding-place to suit them, and there make a lit- 

 tle hollow in the earth which they line as well as they 

 can with a mattress of dry grass, leaves, and feath- 

 ers. That is a nest in the rough, without art, a 

 shapeless construction in comparison with the clever 

 masterpiece of the chaffinch and goldfinch. It is, 

 furthermore, worthy of remark that all the domestic 

 birds, as if man's intervention had destroyed their 

 skill by freeing them from want, fail to display in 



i Uncle Paul and his nephews are here allowed to defy the purist, 

 as they probably would in real life. Translator. 



