INCUBATION. 



179 



EKAUMUKS HATCHING APPARATUS. 



trymen entering into the business on the Egyp- 

 tian method, we will not detain the reader by a 

 description of these ovens ; other and less ex- 

 pensive plans have been adopted. The same 

 feat performed by Livia has been accomplished 

 in New Jersey, where a lady in Monmouth 

 County patiently hatched two chickens, which 

 she successfully raised. Some French ladies 

 have in the same way proved themselves moth- 

 ers of canaries and other birds. 



"On this," says Ames, "I have heard an 

 amusing anecdote, which I give as a hint for 

 the advantage of those similarly situated. lam 

 sure its veracity may be relied on. An indus- 

 trious farmer's wife in New Jersey had a hus- 

 band, or a thing she was obliged to call so, who 

 was intemperate, hypochondriac, and lazy; and 

 after a debauch would sometimes remain in bed 

 for several weeks, from which no persuasion or 

 art could rouse him. His active rib hit upon 

 an expedient to turn this to account, and im- 

 mediately put it in practice. She procured a 

 quantity of fresh eggs, and rolling them in wool 

 and flannel, placed them around him in the bed 

 so as to receive the necessary warmth, and in 

 due time were brought forth a pretty flock of 

 chickens. It was then farther surmised that, 

 finding him more useful in this capacity of an 

 old hen than in any other, she encouraged him, 

 by ' tiny drops,' to lengthen his periods of incu- 

 bation." 



But to return to the hatching apparatus. 

 Many experiments have been made, especially 

 by the celebrated French naturalist and philos- 

 opher, M. Reaumur, under the immediate at- 

 tention of the French king, which were pub- 

 lished in a treatise of five hundred pages, witli 

 plates. It states that he found the proper de- 

 gree of heat to be about ninety degrees of Fah- 

 renheit. He thinks it perfectly practicable. 



Oliver de Serres, the father of French agri- 

 culture, describes a little portable oven, of iron 

 or copper, in which eggs were arranged and 

 surrounded with feathers, and covered with soft 

 cushions, heat having been communicated by 

 means of four lamps, but he says it was more 

 curious than useful. 



The incubation of chickens by hot water 

 is said to be the invention of M. Bonnemain, 

 of Paris. The illustration on the following 

 page is a section of his apparatus, consisting 

 of a boiler, a ; a box or building, 6, for hatch- 

 ing eggs; a cage or coop, c, for rearing the 

 chickens ; tubes, d, for circulating the hot wa- 

 ter ; a supply tube, h, and funnel, e, and safety 

 tube, f. Supposing the water heated in the 

 boiler, it will rise by its specific gravity through 

 the tube, d, move backward and forward through 

 all the tubes, and return again to the boiler at 

 k, which is inserted in the top like the other, 

 but passes down to its lower part, /. This cir- 

 culating movement once commenced, continues 



