40 OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



eggs by hundreds of dozens into a sort of oven gently 

 heated for three weeks, the period of natural incu- 

 bation. At the end of that time the peepings of the 

 countless brood did not fail to announce the success 

 of the operation/' 



" What a big family that oven-hatched brood must 

 have been!" exclaimed Emile. "It would have 

 taken a hundred hens to set on all the eggs, but in 

 this way they were all hatched at once." 



"A setting hen ceases to lay, and it was doubtless 

 in order not to interrupt the beneficent daily produc- 

 tion of eggs that the Egyptians invented artificial 

 incubation in an oven. For the same reason some- 

 times with us recourse is had to this means, espe- 

 cially where the raising of poultry is made a busi- 

 ness ; only the incubation is no longer carried out in 

 an oven but in ingeniously contrived incubators. 

 In a drawer, on a bed of hay, the eggs are placed in 

 a single layer. Above, and separated from the 

 brooder by a sheet-iron partition, is a bed of water, 

 which a lamp, kept always alight, warms and main- 

 tains at the temperature that the hen's body would 

 give; that is to say, forty degrees centigrade. In 

 twenty-one days under this warm ceiling the eggs 

 hatch just as they would under the hen. ' ' 



"Oh, Uncle," cried Emile, "I should really like to 

 have an incubator like that in a corner of my room 

 and watch the progress of the hatching every day 

 by opening the drawer." 



"What you would like to do, others, more skilful, 

 have already done, not only opening the drawer but 



