BIRDS. 



Ill 



continues to lay, vainly hoping to increase the number. In the 

 wild state tlie hen seldom lays above tiitcen eggs ; but then her 

 provision is more diilicultly obtained, and she is perhaps sensible 

 of the difliculty of maintaining too numerous a family. 



When the hen begins to sit, nothing can exceed her persever- 

 ance and patience ; she continues for some days immoveable ; 

 and when forced away by the importunities of hunger, she quick- 

 ly returns. Sometimes, also, her eggs become too hot for her 

 to bear, especially if she be furnished with too warm a nest 

 within doors, for then she is obliged to leave them to cool a lit- 

 tle ; thus the warmth of the nest only retards incubation, and 

 often puts the brood a day or two back in the shell. While the 

 hen sits she carefully turns her eggs, and even removes them to 

 different situations ; till at length, in about three weeks, the 

 young brood begin to give signs of a desire to burst their con- 

 finement. When, by the repeated efforts of their bill, which 

 serves like a pioneer on this occasion, they have broke them- 

 selves a passage through the shell, the hen still continues to sit 

 till all are excluded. The strongest and best chickens genendly 

 are the first candidates for liberty ; the weakest come behind, 

 and some even die in the shell. When all are produced, she 

 then leads them forth to provide for themselves. Her affection 

 and her pride seem then to alter her very nature, and correct her 

 imperfections. No longer voracious or cowardly, she abstains 

 from all food that her young can swallow, and flies boldly at 

 every creature that she thinks is likely to do them mischief. 

 Whatever the invading 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 commander, 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 occasions I have 

 seen the whole brood run for security 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 mastilF, 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 number that a good 

 hen can rear and clutch at a time ; but as this bears no pro])or- 

 tion to the number of her eggs, schemes have been imagined to 

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



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