120 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
clutches of game eggs which have been cut out 
of grass, and have been handed over to a fowl 
for the completion of incubation. It is said that 
the nests of partridges and pheasants, because 
they are on the ground, and almost in actual 
contact with the soil, insure a proper supply of 
moisture to the eggs. And yet there is the same 
perfect hatching of the eggs of French partridges 
at the top of the driest pile of straw as on the 
ground, and of those of the wild-duck aloft in the 
pollarded willow, and even of the pheasant that 
occasionally will nest in an ivy-clad tree or on 
the top of a stump. And the thick-shelled eggs 
of hawks on a dry nest of twigs, hatch well 
enough, and so do wood-pigeons’.. The same 
organic changes must take place in the tissues 
of all eggs that hatch out, irrespective of sort or 
situation. 
In view of this, and of other facts which I have 
observed, the peeling of eggs at hatching-time 
scarcely can be due to the lack of external moisture. 
I believe peeling is caused by a too prolonged 
absence from the eggs, during the intermediate 
period of incubation, of the temperature necessary 
to hatch them, yet not quite long enough to destroy 
the life of the chicks. In short, a special weakness 
of the chicks is the cause of their not breaking the 
shell in- the usual way in the first place; while, in 
the second, the actual peeling of the shells is due 
