18 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ S :.-jan., 1909 



was possible to have an incubator room in which a very even 

 temperature could be preserved. 



The business of incubation was now turned over to an energetic, 

 faithful teacher and the incubator was kept going at its full 

 capacity for two successive periods. It was f^und convenient to 

 utilize some of these eggs at different stages of their development 

 to illustrate normal school work in biology. When the chicks 

 began to hatch out the students were taken in groups to watch 

 the process and they showed almost as much enthusiasm as my 

 boys had shown. 



After being transferred to the brooders the chicks continued 

 to be centers of interest not only for the w r hole school but for 

 visitors to the school. The question now arose as to what should 

 be done with these chicks after they should outgrow the brooders. 

 Here was a new problem. We must have a hen-house and we 

 had no money for that purpose. We visited local poultrymen 

 and obtained printed suggestions from the Cyphers Incubator 

 Company, from the Agricultural Department at Washington 

 and from Orono, Maine. 



We decided to make this our manual training work for awhile 

 and to build a poultry house after plans similar to those described 

 in "Poultry Investigations at the Maine Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, 1906." The School had recently constructed a 

 coal pocket out of reenforced concrete and had saved the lumber 

 and some stones from the same. We dug into the south side of a 

 \-ery sandy bill and erected a strong retaining wall six feet in 

 height, facing it with concrete. We erected walls of concrete 

 two feet high on the other three sides and made a slightly sloping 

 flooi of concrete. We next erected our frame, covered it with 

 the boards and these with shingles. The concrete work was done in 

 the spiing, principally by the men who care for the school grounds 

 under the direction of a first class mason. The framing of the 

 building was done during the summer mostly by instructors 

 and members of the manual training class of the summer school. 

 The shingling and a part of the interior construction was dene 

 during the autumn by the instructor and the normal school 

 students. As winter was fa^t approaching it was found neces- 

 sary to have a carpenter fmish up the work. 



This chicken house had thus furnished an excellent kind of 

 manual training loi the men of the school. I dc not believe that 



