260 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



fearless of danger, and will fly in the face of the fiercest animal that 

 offers to annoy her. 



As the chickens reared by the hen bear no proportion to the num- 

 ber of eggs she produces, many artificial schemes of rearing them 

 hare been attempted. The most successful, though by no means the 

 most humane, is said to be where a capon is made to supply the place 

 of a hen. He is rendered very tame : the feathers are plucked from 

 his breast, and the bare parts are rubbed with nettles. The chickens 

 are then put to him ; and, by their running under his breast with 

 their soft and downy bodies, his pain is so much allayed, and he feels 

 so much comfort to his featherless body, that he soon adopts them, 

 feeding them like a hen, and assiduously performing. all the functions 

 of the tenderest parent. 



Chickens have long been hatched in Egypt by means of artificial 

 heat. This is now chiefly practised by the inhabitants of a village 

 called Berrne, and by those who live at a little distance from it. To- 

 wards the beginning of autumn, these persons spread themselves over 

 the country ; and each of them is ready to undertake the manage- 

 ment of an oven. The ovens are of different sizes, each capable of 

 containing from forty to eighty thousand eggs ; and the number of 

 ovens in different parts is about three hundred and eighty -six. They 

 re usually kept in exercise for about six months; and, as each brood 

 occupies twenty-one days in hatching, it is easy, in every oven to pro 

 duce eight different broods of chickens in the year. 



The ovens where these eggs are placed, are of the most simple con- 

 struction ; consisting only of low arched apartments of clay. Two 

 rows of shelves are formed, and the eggs are placed on these in such 

 a manner as not to touch each other. They are slightly moved five 

 or six times every twenty-four hours. All possible care is taken to 

 diffuse the heat equally throughout ; and there is but one aperture, 

 just large enough to admit a man stooping. During the first eight 

 days the heat is rendered great ; but during the last eight it is gradu- 

 ally diminished, till at length, when the young brood are ready to 

 come forth, it is reduced almost to the state of the natural atmosphere. 

 By the end of the first eight days it is known which of the eggs will 

 be productive. Every person who undertakes the care of an oven, 

 is under the obligation only of delivering to his employer two-thirds 

 of as many chickens as there have been eggs given to him ; and he 

 is a considerable gainer by this bargain, as it almost always happens 

 that many more than that proportion of the eggs produce chickens. 



Thia useful and advantageous mode of hatching eggs, was intro 

 duced into France by M. de Reaumur ; who, by a number of experi 

 ments, reduced the art to certain principles. He found that the de- 

 gree of heat necessary for producing all kinds of domestic fowls was 

 the same, the only difference consisting in the time during which it 

 ought to be communicated to the eggs : it will bring the Canary-bird 

 to perfection in eleven or twelve days, while the turkey-poult requires 

 twenty or twenty-eight. M. de Reaumur found that stoves heated 

 by pipes from a baker's or the furnaces of glasshouses, succeeded 

 better than those made hot by layers of dung, the mode preferred in 



