THE GARDEN AND FIELD. 



January, 1914 



Nothing New Under the 

 Sun. 



" Hardshell,'' in the Journal, 

 has recently published some in- 

 teresting information on "the , mal- 

 treatment of duck eggs as a solu- 

 tion of the dead-in-shell " forward- 

 ed by readers. It occurred to us 

 that we had once read of the same 

 theory and looking the matter up 

 we found the following corrobera- 

 tive but unrehearsed experiment in 

 our January 1906 issue, in the fol- 

 lowing paragraph, which appears 

 to support the theory recently 

 advanced. It reads : — 



— An Interesting Experiment. — 



Many great discoveries have been 

 the result of accident. Did not Co- 

 lumbus do something with an egg? 

 IIowe\er, this is another story. 

 Coming to more^ modem times, 

 Mr. F. W. Ma/rshall reports an 

 incident which is unique in our ex- 

 perience. The facts are these. 

 Twenty-seven eggs were placed in 

 an incubator, and matters pro- 

 gressed favorably for fourteen 

 days, then one of those little acci- 

 dents happened which trv the 

 poultr}man's temper and reduce 

 his hatching percentai;e. For, in 

 opening the drawer, it came out 

 just a little too far, with the re- 

 sult that of the 27 e^i s ■/ were 

 converted into cold omelette on 

 the lioor, leaving 20 of which 17 

 were more or less cracked, bruised, 

 dented, and otherwise knocked 

 about. Most people would have 

 considered that that put an end 

 to their hatch, but with a laudable 

 desire to extend his knowledge by 

 experiment, Mr. ^Marshall replaced 

 the cripples and the three sound 

 eggs, and awaited develoi)ments, 

 and it is in these developments 

 that the extraordinary part of the 

 story comes in. For of the 17 

 eggs, none of which were in a con- 

 dition which is usually considered 

 essential to hatching, ]6 produced 

 live, healthv ducklings, whilst of 

 the three which might reasonably 

 be supposed to do .so, only one 

 hatched, the other two being dead 

 in .shell. This ended chapter one. 

 Chapter 2 began when Mr. Mar- 

 shall set out to imjjrove on the 

 above fortunate accident. He had 

 another Tialf dozen duck eggs un- 

 der process of incubaticm, and with 

 a knife scratched a thin line away 

 at the base of the air cell to a 

 greater or less degree in each egg, 

 and then made four cuts at rieht 

 angles to the first one. Six duck- 

 lings from six c.girs was the re- 

 sult. Another experiment Mr. Mar- 



shall has conducted during the sea- 

 son has been the imm.ersion of eggs 

 in warm water, approximately 103 

 deg. Fah., for periods of from five 

 to ten minutes from the 14th to 

 22nd day of incubation. This has 

 resulted in some surprising hatch- 

 es, and has quite converted him 

 from the " plent}- of air, but no 

 moisture " theory. 



♦ 



The Hen-Oil Idea. 



Like the poor, the old hen-oil 

 theory is always with us in one 

 [orm. or another ; this time it has 

 made its re-appearance in one of 

 America's 'leiading poultry joumals.j 

 A correspondent points out that 

 every has noticed the high polish 

 that eggs attain under the hen, 

 and that we all know that a hen's 

 feathjers are very oily. " Doesn't 

 it seem possible that this oil from 

 the fieathers is rubbed on to the 

 eggs for a purpose or purposes ? 

 Wouldn't the oil hill to a certain 

 extent the pores of the shell, and 

 so pnevent undue evaporation, and 

 wouldn't a fat of any kind applied 

 to a limey substance have a ten- 

 dency to cause the lime to disin- 

 tegrate ? Wouldn't this fatty car. 

 bon explain the higher percentage 

 of carbon dioxide under the hen, 

 and wouldn't the chick find an 

 easier road out of the shell rotted 

 by the oil ? " 



This is a question for the scien- 

 tific invesitigator of problems of 

 this character. The question has 

 been asked a great many times— 

 not always in just the same form 

 -^but never answered. The o5i which 

 the eggs take from the hen, prob- 

 ably comes principally, from con- 

 tact with the skin, not from' the 

 feathers. This oily deposit on the 

 eggs is an inevitable result of the 

 contact between the egg-shell and 

 the oily skin of the fowl, but it 

 would not be reasonable to assume 

 that the skin was supplied with 

 oil because the oil was necessary 

 in incubation, unless it could be 

 sho.Kvn that the skin contained 

 moire oil when a hen was broody 

 than at other times. In otrder 

 that feathers and skin may pro- 

 perly perform their regular func- 

 tions, they must contain oil. An 

 ab.sence or insufliciency of oil is 

 detrimental to the featheirs, injur- 

 ing their texture, and, perhaps, 

 causing irregularities in feather 

 reproduction. It also injures the 

 skin, making fowls extremely sus- 

 ceptible to diseases of the skin, 

 and, no doubt, increasing some- 

 what susceptibility to some other 



diseases. The oiling of the eggs 

 in natural incubation appears to 

 be merely incidental, and from the 

 degree of success attained in arti- 

 ficial incubation without oiling 

 eggs, it seems most reasonable to 

 conclude that the influence of oil- 

 ing is very slight. This, however, 

 though the most reasonable view 

 of the case as presented, is a su- 

 perficial view. It is simply the 

 most rational view to take, until 

 it has been shown that the other 

 view contains more elements of 

 probability. 



♦ 



The Langshan. 



One is perhaps apt in speaking 

 of poultry keeping and the doings 

 of the White Leghorn, Black Or- 

 pington, and Silver Wyandotte, to 

 forget that there are others. There 

 are some good birds amongst these 

 others, possibly just as good and 

 just as profitable as the leading 

 three. They have not had their 

 chance or the luck has not been 

 with them, that is all. Theiir "best 

 hens " have been out of town 

 when wanted. To take three from 

 the general purpose brigade, 

 what about I?angshan, White Wy- 

 andotte, and White Orpington. To 

 us it appears that there are not 

 m.any Hies on that trio. The lyang- 

 shan is one of the most interesting 

 breeds we have. Many years ago 

 we remember them in England as 

 big bulky birds, hens weighing up 

 to 9 lbs., layers of large dark 

 •shelle^d eggs, and they sat like the 

 Federal Parliament for half the 

 year. However, they did most of 

 it in the summer, so that though 

 the total number of eggs for the 

 year was not great, the November 

 to March contribution was very 

 profitable. Then cam© the Black 

 Orpington, which killed the I/ang- 

 shan, not, we believe, because it 

 was better, but because it was 

 newer and Cook knew how to ad- 

 vertise. Then there was the Lang- 

 shan spUt "Old English," ','Croad" 

 and " I^xhibition " Langshan, and 

 that was the beginning, the mid- 

 dle, and the end of trouble. How- 

 ever, that is ancient history. The 

 Langshan, as a competition fowl, 

 begin.s^ with the " Chinese " Lang- 

 shan, practically the old "Croad" 

 importation to England. It will 

 be remembered that a pen bred the 

 first season from a direct importa- 

 tion put up a big record, 246 per 

 hen and 166 the second year. The 

 interesting point is, whence did they 

 get their laying ? That surely was 

 " natural " laying, there had been 



