THE PEOPLE'S PRACTICAL POULTRY BOOK. 



167 



box about six or eight feet long, with a glass door or lid that lifts up. The 

 apparatus for heating the artificial mother is on the same principle as that of 



GRAVES' ARTIFICIAL, MOTHER. 



heating the incubator. It consists of a tank, a, filled with warm water, in- 

 closed in the box under, a, and provided on its under side with a lining of 

 sheepskin, or other soft material, and having an open space, covered with a 

 glass roof, d. t, thermometer, regulating the heat on the inside, e, sliding 

 door, for the chickens to run in or out, at either end of the artificial mother. 

 As we have said elsewhere, the mother is heated on the same principle as the 

 Graves Incubator, therefore we deem any further description unnecessary and 

 superfluous. 



IRREGULAR SEXUAL VARIATIONS OF PLUMAGE. 



THIS is a subject that has of late attracted considerable attention of 

 breeders, not only in this country, but also in England and France. Some 

 time during 1869 a correspondent and particular friend of Moore's Rural 

 New- Yorker entered a complaint against a well-known breeder, of having 

 been swindled by him. He (the said correspondent) having purchased a 

 pair of fowls and represented that instead of receiving a male and 

 female bird he had got two male birds. Some time after he discovered 

 that one of the birds had every appearance of being a cock bird, both in 

 plumage and action, but laid an egg every day with the regularity of clock- 



