THE DOMESTIC FOWL. Ill 



the egg, but most frequently staleness of the eggs em- 

 ployed for incubation. The chances of rearing such 

 chicks are small, but if they get over the first twenty- 

 four hours they may be considered as safe. But all 

 the old wives' nostrums to recover them are to be dis- 

 carded ; the merest drop of ale may be a useful stimu- 

 lant, but an intoxicated chick is as liable to sprawl 

 about and have the breath trodden out of its body as a 

 fainting one. Pepper corns, gin, rue, and fifty other 

 ways of doctoring, are to be banished afar. 



The only thing to be done, is to take the chicks 

 from the hen till she is nestled at night, keeping them 

 in the meanwhile as snug and warm as possible. 

 If a clever, kind, gentle-handed little girl could get a 

 crumb of bread down their throats, it would do no 

 harm. Animal heat will be their greatest restorative. 

 At night, let them be quietly slipped under their 

 mother ; the next morning they will be either as brisk 

 as the rest, or as " flat as pancakes." 



Now I am on the subject of hatching, I may as well 

 refer to the perplexity to which poultry keepers are 

 sometimes subjected, when hens will sit, at seasons of 

 the year at which there is little chance of bringing up 

 chickens. Some advise the hens to be soaked in a pail 

 of water, cold from the pump ; but if they have a mind 

 to kill her, it is more cruel to do so by giving her 

 fever and inflammation of the lungs, than by simply 

 knocking her on the head. A less objectionable rem- 

 edy, is the following : " I have known one or two 

 doses of jalap relieve them entirely from a desire to sit ; 

 and in my opinion it is far better than the cold-water 

 cure. I have known English Jfowls lay in three weeks 

 afterwards."* But why not let the poor creatures obey 

 their natural propensity ? Or, surely, some neighbor 

 would gladly exchange a laying hen for one that 

 wanted to sit. Others, borrowing an ancient piece 

 of barbarism, recommend a large feather to be thrust 

 through the nostrils ; that she may rush here and 



Dixon. 



