ORDER GALLIN.E. 205 



events, it is very easy to bring him back to the habit of it, 

 when necessary. 



The capon has, also, as we have observed, been taught to 

 cover eggs. The preliminaries are similar to those we have 

 already described as preparatory to his conducting chickens. 

 There is considerable advantage in this, as he can cover 

 twenty-five eggs, at least ; and after the incubation, he will 

 lead the young ones without any trouble. He may be made 

 to recommence this operation two or three times successively, 

 and especially if care be taken to nourish him well. Were a 

 practice of this kind generally adopted, hens would continue 

 to lay without intermission, up to the season of moulting. 



Hens are sometimes caponed as well as cocks, and thereby 

 the flavour of their flesh is very much improved. 



The epicurism of man has suggested various modes of 

 fattening fowls excessively, all of which are unnatural, and 

 more or less cruel. Their result, in fact, is always to pro- 

 duce disease, and more particularly of the liver. We must 

 be excused from entering into any details respecting them. 

 They only show how far a perverted taste will degrade civi- 

 lized man, when he makes his intellectual faculties wholly 

 subservient to the uncontrolled requisitions of his animal 

 nature. 



A brief notice of the modes of hatching chickens arti- 

 ficially, will, however, not be without interest for our 

 readers. 



When men had tamed those fowls which people our 

 poultry-yards, and succeeded in making hens lay eggs nearly 

 all the year round, they were enabled to appreciate the 

 immense resources thus opened to them, and became naturally 

 desirous of extending them. This doubtless gave rise to the 

 idea of artificial incubation. It had been observed, that 

 eggs, deposited and left in a place where a temperature pre- 

 dominated equally elevated and invariable as that which the 



