no HISTORY OF 



blow ; but as Boeihaave has said upon a former occasion, when 

 he was treating upon poisons, " to teach the arts of cruelty is 

 equivalent to committing them." 



This extraordinary courage in the cock is thought to proceed 

 from his being the most salacious of all other birds whatso- 

 ever. A single cock suffices for ten or a dozen hens ; and it 

 is said of him, that he is the only animal whose spirits are not 

 abated by indulgence. But then he soon grows old j the ra- 

 dical moisture is exhausted •, and in three or four years he be- 

 comes utterly unfit for the purposes of impregnation. " Hens 

 also," to use the words of Willoughby, " as they for the greatest 

 part of the year daily lay eggs, caimot suffice for so many births, 

 but for the most pan, after three years, become effete and bar- 

 ren : for when they have exhausted all their seed-eggs, of which 

 they had but a certain quantity from the beginning, they must 

 necessarily cease to lay, there being no new ones generated 

 within. 



The hen seldom clutches a brood of chickens above once a 

 season, though instances have been known in which they pro- 

 duced two. The number of eggs a domestic hen will lay in the 

 year are above two hundred, provided she be well fed, and sup. 

 plied with water and liberty. It matters not much whether she 

 be trodden by the cock or no ; she will continue to lay, although 

 all the eggs of this kind can never, by hatching, be brought to 

 produce a living animal. Her nest is made without any care, if 

 left to herself; a hole scratched into the ground, among a few 

 bushes, is the only preparation she makes for this season of pa- 

 tient expectation. Nature, almost exhausted by its own fecun- 

 dity, seems to inform her of the proper time for hatching, which 

 she herself testifies by a clucking note, and by discontinuing to 

 lay. The good housewives, who often get more by their hens 

 laying than by their chickens, artificially protract this clucking 

 season, and sometimes entirely remove it. As soon as their 

 hen begins to cluck, they stint her in her provisions ; and if 

 that fails, they plunge her into cold water : this, for the time, 

 effectually puts back her hatching; but then it often kills the 

 poor bird, who takes cold, and dies under the operation. 



If left entirely to herself, the hen would seldom lay above 

 twenty eggs in the same nest, without attempting to hatch them : 

 but in proportion as she lays, her eggs aie removed ; and shp 



