FOUR Chinese; incubators in a room where there are thirty, each having a 



CAPACITY OE 1,200 HEN EGGS 



Each incubator consists of a large earthenware jar having a door cut in one side, through 

 which live charcoal may be introduced and the fire partly smothered under a layer of ashes, 

 this serving as the source of heat. The jar is thoroughly insulated, cased in basketwork, and 

 provided with a cover, as seen in the illustration. Inside the outer jar rests a second of 

 nearly the same size, as one teacup may in another. Into this is lowered the large basket 

 with its 600 hen eggs, 400 duck eggs, or 175 goose eggs, as the case may be. After a basket 

 of hen eggs has been incubated four days it is removed and the eggs examined by light- 

 ing, to remove those which are infertile before they have been rendered nnsalable. The 

 infertile eggs go to the store and the basket is returned to the incubator. Duck eggs are 

 similarly examined after two days' and again after five days' incubation, and goose eggs 

 after six days and again after fourteen days. Through these precautions practically all loss 

 from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile eggs are hatched, 

 the infertile eggs ranging from 5 to 25 per cent. 



The Mongolian races, with a popula- 

 tion now approaching the figure named, 

 occupying an area little more than one- 

 half that of the United States, tihing less 

 than 800,000 square miles of land, and 

 much of this during 20, 30, or perhaps 

 40 centuries, unable to avail themselves 

 of mineral fertilizers, could not survive 

 and tolerate such waste. 



Not even in great cities like Canton, 

 built in the meshes of tide-swept rivers 

 and canals ; like Hankau, on the banks of 

 one of the largest rivers in the world ; 

 nor yet in modern Shanghai, Yokohama, 

 or Tokyo, is such waste permitted. To 

 them such a practice has meant race 

 suicide, and they have resisted the temp- 

 tation so long that it has ceased to exist. 



Had the Mongolian races spread to 

 and developed in North America instead 

 of or as well as in eastern Asia, there 

 might have been a Grand Canal, some- 

 thing as suggested on page 933, from the 

 Rio Grande to the mouth of the Ohio 

 River and from the Mississippi to Chesa- 

 peake Bay, constituting more than 2,00a 

 miles of inland waterway, serving com- 

 merce, holding up and redistributing 

 both the run-oiT water and the wasting 

 fertility of soil erosion, spreading them 

 over 200,000 square miles of thoroughly 

 canalized coastal plains, so many of 

 which are now impoverished lands, made 

 so by the intolerable waste of a vaunted 

 civilization. 



And who shall venture to enumerate 



950 



