

94 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



himself, either in the character of a conqueror, or a 

 defeated champion. 



ON THE LAYING- PROPENSITIES OF HENS. 



THE act of laying is not voluntary on the part of a 

 hen, but is dependent upon her age, constitution, and 

 diet. If she be young, healthy, and well-fed, lay she 

 must ; if she be aged and half-starved, lay she cannot. 

 All that is left to her own choice is, where she shall 

 deposit her egg, and she is sometimes so completely 

 taken by surprise, as not to have her own way even at 

 that. The poultry keeper, therefore, has only to decide 

 which is the more convenient that his hens should lay 

 here and there, as it may happen, about his premises, or 

 in certain determinate places, indicated to the hens by 

 nest eggs. Yet it is quite a mistake to suppose that the 

 presence of a nest egg causes a hen to sit earlier than 

 she otherwise would. The sight of twenty nest eggs 

 will not bring on the hatching fever ; and when it does 

 come, the hen will take to the empty nest, if there be 

 nothing else for her to incubate. Any one, whose hens 

 have from accident been deprived of a male companion, 

 cannot be ignorant of the fact, that they have not done 

 so well till the loss has been supplied. During the 

 interregnum matters get all wrong. The poor deserted 

 creatures wander about dispirited, like soldiers without 

 a general. It belongs to their very nature to be con- 

 trolled and marshalled by one of the stronger sex, who 

 is a kind, though a strict master, and a considerate 

 though stern disciplinarian. 



QUALITIES AND SEX OF EGGS. 



To every hen belongs an individual peculiarity in 

 the form, color, and size of the egg she lays, which 

 never changes during her whole lifetime, so long as she 

 remains in health, and which is as well known to those 

 who are in the habit of taking her produce, as the 

 handwriting of their nearest acquaintance. Some hens 

 lay smooth cream -colored eggs, others rough, chalky, 

 granulated ones. Then, there is the buff, the snow- 

 white, the spherical, the oval, the pear-shaped, and the 

 emphatically egg-shaped egg. A farmer's wife who 



