BOOK X. Lxxv. 152-LXXV1. 155 



hen is sitting the eggs die, and it' she hears the cry 

 of a hawk they go bad. A remedy against thunder 

 is an iron nail placed under the straw in which the 

 eggs lie, or some earth from the plough. In some 

 cases Nature liatches of her own accord even without 

 the hen sitting, as on the dungliills of Egypt. We 

 fuid a clever story about a certain toper at Syracuse, 

 that he used to go on drinking for as long a time as it 

 would take for eggs covered witli earth to produce a 

 hatch. 



LXXVI. Moreover eggs can be hatched even by Birih-cmuroi 

 a human being. Julia Augusta " in her early woman- and'^^r'^ 

 hood was with child with Tiberius Caesar by Nero, po»i'nj- 

 and being specially eager to a bear a baby of the 

 male sex she employed the following metliod of 

 prognostication used by girls — she cherished an egg 

 in her bosom and when she had to lay it aside passed 

 it to a nurse under the folds of their dresses, so that 

 the warmth might not be interrupted ; and it is said 

 that her prognostication came true. It was perhaps 

 from this that the method was lately invented of 

 placing eggs in chaff in a wai'm place and cherishing 

 them with a moderate fire, with somebody to keep 

 turning them over, with the result that all the live 

 brood breaks the shell at once on a fixed day. It is 

 recox'ded that a certain poultry-keeper had a 

 scientific method of telling which egg was from which 

 hen. It is related also that when a hen has died the 

 cocks of the farmyard have been seen taking on her 

 duties in turn and generally behaving in the manner 

 of a broody hen, and abstaining from crowing. 

 Above all things is the behaviour of a hen when ducks' 

 eggs have been put under her and have hatched out 

 — first her surprise when she does not quite recognize 



391 



