LETTER FROM DR. JOS. WJXSON TO DR. L, J. WILLIAMS, tt. S. N., 



DESCRIBING 



THE MANNER OF HATCHING DUCKS IN CHINA 



United States Navy Yard, 



Philadelphia, February 23, 1856. 



Dear Doctor: I have received your paper of the 22d instant, and as I suppose I may serve 

 your purpose hetter hy going a little into detail, I will do so. There was no artificial heat m 

 actual use while I was there ; the temperature of the external atmosphere was at ahout 90° 

 Fahrenheit ; and there was a small chamber with a number of furnaces and charcoal ready to be 

 lighted and put in requisition at very short notice. 



The whole establishment was conducted in a rough building, like the common business places 

 of the Chinese — front entirely open, partition wall to separate it from its neighbors, mud 

 floor, &c. 



The front room had large shelves on the two sides, about four feet deep from the wall 

 extending the whole length, the lower about a yard from the ground, and two others about 

 eighteen inches apart. These shelves were appropriated to eggs which were within two or 

 three days of their term ; the shelves were first covered with two or three thicknesses of heavy 

 spongy paper, almost as thick as blankets, which appeared to have been manufactured for the 

 special purpose, in sheets four or five feet square. Next came a layer of eggs, two deep, all 

 over the shelves, and two or three layers of the blanket paper mentioned. Parts of these 

 shelves were occupied by eggs which had but recently been placed there ; they felt very warm 

 to the hand ; seemed to depend exclusively upon their own warmth, which was certainly much 

 above that of the atmosphere ; the blanket paper protecting them from its chilling influence 

 as well as sudden changes. On some parts of the shelves the eggs were hatching, and the 

 men were engaged where they were nearly all hatched in separating them ; they tossed the 

 little ones, as well as the eggs which showed signs of animation, very roughly and carelessly 

 into baskets at considerable distance, greatly endangering the strangers' lives from concussion, 

 fracture of limbs, &c, in our estimation ; but in John's opinion it merely broke the shells, and 

 thus enabled them the better to extricate themselves. The ducklings, after remaining a few 

 hours to dry and extricate themselves from shells, were placed on the floor in little movable 

 basket-work enclosures of bamboo, and supplied with a kind of grass, chopped up for food, 

 which they ate with an appetite which showed that they fully appreciated it. This grass was 



