GALLUS DOMESTICUS. 



ularly, the firstlings should be kept in flannel, near a fire, all 

 day, till the others come forth ; but they should be returned to 

 the mother at night. The hen and her brood should be kept 

 warm, and be cooped out of doors only in dry, fine weather. 

 They should be fed for some days on bread-crumbs, with 

 some finely-chopped leeks, and be carefully supplied with 

 clear, clean water daily. Boiled barley, and boiled rice, &c., 

 succeeds, till in about three weeks they are sufficiently strong 

 to be turned into the poultry-yard. When the young chick- 

 ens get their head feathers, they are out of danger of all in- 

 fantine disorders. Nothing is so requisite for all poultry as 

 warmth, cleanliness, and good water. They should never be 

 allowed to roost in stables, or kept near cattle, as they com- 

 municate their vermin to these, which worries and prevents 

 them from growing fat. Every poultry-yard should have a 

 bed of ashes deposited in a corner, the fowls delight in a 

 dung-hill and an ash-hole ; the former produces seeds and in- 

 sects, and the latter calcareous matter, and destroys their ver- 

 min by its sharpness, as they revel in its rough particles. 

 Fowls to be fattened for the table should be put into coops 

 for a fortnight or three weeks, and fed upon good barley-meal 

 moistened with milk or water and lard. Give it four or five 

 times per day, sufficiently moist to require no drink with the 

 food. 



The changes which the hen's egg undergoes during incu- 

 bation have been described by Sir E. Home, in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for the Year 1822 (page 339), and illus- 

 trated by a beautiful series of plates, after Banner's drawings ; 

 the same volume also contains a valuable paper by Dr. Prout 

 on the same subject, but chiefly in reference to the chemical 

 changes of the egg during that process. The specific gravity 

 of new-laid eggs at first rather exceeds that of water, vary- 

 ing from 1080 to 1090 ; but they soon become lighter, and 

 swim on water, in consequence of evaporation through the 

 pores of the shell. When an egg is boiled in water and suf- 

 fered to cool in the air, it looses about 32 hundredths of a 

 grain of saline matter, together with a trace of animal matter, 

 and free alkali. The mean weight of a hen's egg is about 

 875 grains, of which the shell and its inner membrane weigh 

 93.7 grains, the albumen or white 529.8 grains, and the yelk 

 251.8 grains. When the yelk of a hard-boiled egg is digested 

 in repeated portions of strong alcohol, there remains a white 



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