THE POULTRY KIND. 135 



and flies boldly at every creature that she thinks 

 is likely to do them mischief. Whatever the in- 

 vading animal be, she boldly attacks him; the 

 horse, the hog, or the mastiff. When marching 

 at the head of her little troop, she acts the com- 

 mander, and has a variety of notes to call her 

 numerous train to their food, or to warn them of 

 approaching danger. Upon one of these oc- 

 casions, I have seen the whole brood run for se- 

 curity into the thickest part of a hedge, when 

 the hen herself ventured boldly forth, and faced 

 a fox that came for plunder. With a good mas- 

 tiff, however, we soon sent the invader back to 

 his retreat ; but not before he had wounded the 

 hen in several places. 



Ten or twelve chickens are the greatest num- 

 ber that a good hen can rear and clutch at a 

 time ; but as this bears no proportion to the num- 

 ber of her eggs, schemes have been imagined to 

 clutch all the eggs of a hen, and thus turn her 

 produce to the greatest advantage. By these 

 contrivances it has been obtained, that a hen that 

 ordinarily produces but twelve chickens in the 

 year, is found to produce as many chickens as 

 eggs, and consequently often above two hundred. 

 The contrivance I mean is the artificial method 

 of hatching chickens in stoves, as is practised at 

 Grand Cairo ; or in a chemical elaboratory pro- 

 perly graduated, as has been effected by M. Reau- 

 mur. At Grand Cairo they thus produce six or 

 seven thousand chickens at a time ; where, as 

 they are brought forth in their mild spring, which 

 is warmer than our summer, the young ones 



