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CHAPTER V. 



ARTIFICIAL HATCHING, 



It is not to be wondered at that much thought and labour should have been devoted to the subject 

 of hatching by artificial means. Early chickens are important to all poultry-keepers, whatever be 

 the object they have in view ; and to the fancier, who desires to have birds fully matured and ready 

 for exhibition in time for the autumn shows, they are absolutely essential to success. But hens 

 rarely evince a desire to sit at such seasons, unless perhaps in the case of Cochin or Brahma 

 pullets ; and as these seldom go long enough with their chickens for very cold weather, the 

 obtaining of suitable mothers early in the year is one of the fancier's most anxious cares. Often, 

 indeed, all his efforts fail, and he is doomed to see such eggs as money could not purchase abso- 

 lutely wasted for want of hens to sit upon them ; while at the same time he would be willing to give 

 almost any price in reason for the means of turning them into those chickens which he has well- 

 founded hopes would win him many a prize at next season's shows. The commercial poultiy- 

 keeper is rather more fortunate. Having a large stock of birds, he has the greater chance of finding 

 at least a few early sitters amongst them ; but even he would gladly set more if he could, remem- 

 bering the high prices of the early markets, which well repay extra housing, feeding, and care. 

 When, therefore, it is known that for hundreds if not thousands of years chickens have been hatclied 

 in immense numbers, both in Egypt and in China, with no apparent difficulty and certainly with 

 very little failure, the only marvel would seem to be that in Europe, with all the resources both of 

 science and mechanical skill in construction, similar attempts have not been made upon a larger 

 scale and with a larger measure of success. 



It is perhaps possible that the apparent simplicity and certainty of the Oriental processes have 

 caused the much more favourable conditions under which they are conducted to be forgotten. Both 

 in China and in Egypt they are carried on, for instance, on a vast scale, under constant personal 

 supervision, and in a temperature both warm and remarkably uniform. The eggs are not placed 

 in confined drawers, but generally in roomy chambers : and comparing this with the process of 

 pature, and with the conclusion to which both Mr. Halsted and ourselves have come, as observed 

 further on, with regard to the necessity for ventilation, this fact has a significance which has pro- 

 bably to a great extent been overlooked. The simplicity of the process, in Egypt at least, may 

 also be more apparent than real. The profession of artificial hatching is there strictly hereditary, 

 or confined to certain families and handed down from father to son, and all its details are kept most 

 religiously secret, under solemn oaths not to divulge them. Beyond the fact that the hatching 

 chambers or ovens are underground, that the fuel employed is that so common in the East — cow- 

 dung baked in the sun — and that after a certain period the ovens are believed to be closed, and the 

 eggs not again meddled with until the proper period for hatching has expired, little or nothing is 

 really known about it. We believe that no European has ever been really allowed to visit the 

 interior of an oven, or to see the process actually going on ; and when we consider that those who 

 conduct it pass their lives in the occupation, and how jealously they guard all knowledge respecting 

 it from any but the authorised members of the tribe, we can well believe that there arc secrets 

 which they have only themselves extorted from Nature by long study and observation, and which 



