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THE PEOPLE S PRACTICAL POULTRY BOOK. 



and four hours afterward, the intestines, and loins, and the upper jaw. At 

 the hundred and forty-fourth hour, two ventricles are visible, and two drops 

 of blood instead of the single one which was seen before. The seventh day, 

 the brain begins to have some consistency. At the hundred and nineteenth 

 hour of incubation, the bill opens, and the flesh appears in the breast. In 

 four hours more, the breast-bone is seen. In six hours after this, the ribs 

 appear, forming from the back, and the bill is very visible, as well as the gall- 

 bladder. The bill becomes green at the end of two hundred and thirty-six 

 hours ; and if the chicken be taken out of its covering, it evidently moves 

 itself. The feathers begin to shoot out toward the two hundred and fortieth 

 hour, and the skull becomes gristly. At the two hundred and sixty-fourth 

 hour, the eyes appear. At the two hundred and eighty-eighth, the ribs are 

 perfect. At the three hundred and thirty-first, the spleen draws near the 

 stomach, and the lungs to the chest. At the end of three hundred and fifty- 

 five hours, the bill frequently opens and shuts; and at the end of the 

 eighteenth day, the first cry of the chicken is heard. It afterward gets more 

 strength and grows continually, till at length it is enabled to set itself free 

 from its confinement. 



" In the whole of this process we must remark that every part appears at 

 its proper time ; if, for example, the liver is formed on the fifth day, it is 

 founded on the preceding situation of the chicken, and on the changes that 

 were to follow. No part of the body could possibly appear either sooner or 

 later without the whole embryo suifering ; and each of the limbs becomes 

 visible at the first moment. This ordination, so wise and so invariable, is 



manifestly the work of a Supreme Be- 

 ing; but we must still more sensibly 

 acknowledge His creative powers, when 

 we consider the manner in which the 

 chicken is formed out of the parts 

 which compose the egg. How aston- 

 ishing it must appear to an observing 

 mind, that in this substance there 

 should at all be the vital principle of 

 an animated being ; that all the parts 

 of an animal's body should be con- 

 cealed in it, and require nothing but 

 heat to unfold and quicken them ; that 

 the whole formation of the chicken 

 should be so constant and regular that, 

 exactly at the same time, the same 

 changes will take place in the gener- 

 ality of eggs ; that the chicken, the moment it is hatched, is heavier than 

 the egg was before ! But even these are not all the wonders in the for- 

 mation of the bird from the egg for this instance will serve to illustrate 



