ORDER GALLIN.E. -09 



a celebrated natural philosopher invented the thermometer, the 

 most proper instrument for regulating the temperature necessary 

 for artificial incubation. Reaumur employed himself in collect- 

 ing all the testimonies of travellers, comparing them together, 

 endeavouring to reconcile them, and repeating all the pi'o- 

 cesses of this art, so as to establish it finally in France. Un- 

 fortunately, certain errors had crept into all the descriptions 

 of travellers, which Reaumur, and other philosophers after him, 

 conceived to be defects in the art itself. He could not pos- 

 sibly doubt the success with which the experiment had been 

 attended in Egypt ; but he persuaded himself that it was 

 owing to the temperature of that country. He judged that it 

 would be impossible to obtain similar results in France, 

 where the climate could not correct the faults in the modus 

 operandi. Instead, therefore, of following his original design 

 of bringing to perfection the Egyptian plan, he endeavoured to 

 find out another. He devised two methods, which he pre- 

 sented to the public, as more convenient, less expensive, and 

 more certain than the Egyptian system. 



The first consisted in placing in a mass of dung in fomen- 

 tation, some casks, upright, and plastered internally, in Avhich 

 he put the eggs, ranged in suspended baskets ; or in covering, 

 and enveloping with dung, large and long chests, fixed hori- 

 zontally, painted, or pitched outside, furnished with lead 

 internally, having one of their extremities fastened into a 

 wall, and opening into a room which this wall separated 

 from the dunghill. Little chariots, on casters, were passed 

 through this aperture, containing the eggs. 



In these horizontal boxes, and also in the vertically placed 

 casks, he held thermometers, to judge of the temperature 

 which reigned there, and to ascertain if it was necessary to 

 raise or lower it. 



The second method converted either into a sort of hot- 

 house the place above those ovens that are continually em_ 



VOL. VIII. r 



