• CHAPTER n. 



The Rearing of Chickens. 



THB BOG. 



AU animal life has its beginning in the egg. In the mammals this egg is hatched 

 within the body of the mother, and the young animal attains to a greater or less 

 stage of development there before being thrown upon the cold charities of the 

 world. Among most other orders of animals, howevei', the egg, after being 

 charged with » supply of nutriment sufficient to carry its inhabitant to a stage 

 of growth from which it may proceed with but little external assistance, is re- 

 moved from the body, and the life within it awakened or destroyed by the cir- 

 cumstances with which it finds itself surrounded. 



The essential part of the egg is the mtelhia, or yelk, which, in its simplest form, is 

 simply a globular mass of oily and albuminous matter, surrounded by a color- 

 less, transparent, homogenous membrane — the vUeUine membrcme. In the hen 

 these yelks may be found as a mass of yellow balls {owies) of all sizes, those 

 most- nearly developed being nearly an inch in diameter. 



These yolks, or yelks, are arranged in consecutive layers, as may be seen by 

 cutting through a hard-boiled egg. In addition to the purely chemical elements 

 which constitute their oil and albumen, they contain the life-germ of the future 

 chick, which may be seen as a small, circular speck on top of the yelk upon 

 breaking the egg into a basin. This speck is constantly kept on top of the yelk 

 through the agency of gravity, it being lighter than the rest of the egg, while op- 

 posite it is found a comparatively dense.mass of albumen called the Ohaiasm, 

 which serves as a ballast to keep the germ uppermost on whichever side the egg 

 may be laid.* By this arrangement the germ is kept constantly near the breast 

 of the hen, in such a situation as to most promptly receive the warmth of the 

 hen, and to avoid the injury to the growing embryo which would resulttrom the 

 pressure of the heavy mass of the yelk. 



These life-germs exist in all eggs, but the contact of the male element, or 

 sperm, is required to give them vitality. Without that contact the bird's egg is 

 simply a lump of inanimate matter, doomed to destruction. With it, this same 

 lump of matter becomes endowed with that wonderful and incomprehensible 

 thing, the life-principle, which renders this inanimate egg capable of building 

 its particles together into the perfectly formed, living chick ; which gives the 

 seed the ability to develop into the full grown plant or tree, which brings forth 

 bud and flower with every spring-time, and of which Professor Tyndall, the man 

 who has been so widely aspersed because the revelations which he has read from 

 th« wonderful book of Nature do not coincide with the interpretations which 

 doctrinarians have ignorantly put upon the equally wonderful Word, has said, in 

 speaking of atoms : 



*Tegetmeier. 

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