INCUBATION 39 



come every day and gently take her off and make her 

 eat. Others, less persevering, leave the basket of 

 their own accord, snatch up a little food, and immedi- 

 ately go back to the nest." 



"Do hens keep up that tiresome setting very 

 long?" asked Emile. 



"It takes twenty or twenty-one days for the young 

 chickens to come out of the shell. During the whole 

 of that time, night and day, the mother remains 

 squatting on the eggs, except for the rare moments 

 that she spares, as if grudgingly, for the necessities 

 of nourishment. Her only distraction in this com- 

 plete retirement is to turn the eggs over every 

 twenty-four hours and change their place, moving 

 those outside into the center, and vice versa, so that 

 all may have an equal share of heat. That is a deli- 

 cate operation, and it must be left to the hen's 

 care to move the eggs with her beak. Let us be 

 careful not to interfere with our clumsy hands, for 

 the bird knows better than we how to manage it." 



"If the hen is so careful to move the eggs every 

 day and give them all the same amount of heat," said 

 Jules, "it must be heat alone that makes them 

 hatch?" 



"Yes, my friend, simply the heat of the mother 

 makes the eggs hatch. That is why the hen can be 

 dispensed with and the eggs hatched by artificial 

 heat, provided it be well regulated, gentle, and con- 

 tinued for a long time without interruption. The 

 Egyptians, an ancient people of great skill, practised 

 this method thousands of years ago. They put the 



