THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 119 



ment to be pursued? Many persons, as the chickens 

 leave the eggs, remove them one by one, and place 

 them in a basket, covered up with flannel, and keep 

 them in a warm place, returning them to the hen 

 when the last has made its appearance. This is not 

 generally necessary ; it is unnatural, and may fret the 

 hen, who delights in her young brood, whose piping 

 notes, while the chicks were yet in the egg, she has 

 listened to with complacency. The shells," however, 

 should be cleared from the nest, but unless circum- 

 stances render it necessary, the young chickens may 

 be allowed to remain. But suppose that the weather 

 is piercingly cold, and that the hen is restless, then let 

 the chickens have warmth and every attention. Those 

 hatched during the winter, or colder spring months, 

 require comfortable housing, the hen being with them, 

 and the less that interference be made between the 

 hen and her chicks, the better ; they troop around her ; 

 she protects them, gathers them under her wings, and 

 watches over them with the most earnest solicitude. 



Some persons, especially in France, train capons to 

 act as nurses to their broods of chickens which are 

 reared ; and some have recourse to artificial mothers, 

 or boxes lined with a soft and warm material for the 

 protection of the brood. 



That capons can be taught or trained to hatch a 

 clutch of eggs, and attend to the young, was known 

 to the ancients ; and indeed there are cases on record 

 of the cock having laid aside his lordly air, and devoted 

 himself with exemplary patience to the work- of incu- 

 bation ; in other cases, he has taken the place of the 

 hen in watching over the chickens when accident has 

 deprived them of her care. 



Baptista Porta, in his strange work on Natural 

 Magic, gives instructions as to the mode of taming 

 and training capons for the task of nursing. "In the 

 first place, the bird must be made so familiar as to 

 take food. from the hand; this primary step being ac- 

 complished, on the evening, when his services are re- 



