THE EGGS AND HATCHING APPLIANCES. 29 



with the shell membrane, causing adhesion sooner or 

 later, according as the air around the egg is moist or 

 dry. The result is that the embryo soon dies, and in 

 two or three days a dark spot adhering to the shell 

 and plainly visible in the egg tester so many of 

 these are in the market that I must decline to 

 particularise or recommend any defininite article 

 shows to the careful observer that that egg is addled. 



You will know by the pencilled date upon each egg 

 the day it ought to hatch. Set your eggs in big 

 batches, commencing about April 18, and keep them 

 moving up together from one end of the line of boxes 

 to the other, so as to get well together the eggs that 

 ought to hatch out on the same day. It is less 

 trouble to a keeper to look after five hundred young 

 poults, all of the same age and size than to attend to 

 one or a couple of hundred of all sorts, sizes, and 

 conditions ; but how few keepers will recognise and 

 attend to this obvious fact ! If a hen should throw 

 up her work, as will happen even amongst the best 

 regulated " fowleries," it is very easy to change her 

 eggs in amongst another lot bearing the same date of 

 sitting, and they will still all come out together ; and 

 if a fresh hen has to be hastily impressed into your 

 service, she can be accommodated with a batch of 

 eggs all equally incubated, and bound to come out 

 within a very few hours of each other. 



Test the eggs at eight days, and eliminate all the 

 addled ones ; keep moving the good ones on, so as to 



