70 
Fa/rm Poultry. 
must be no access to tigh rafters or cross-beams, up to which the 
fowls can fly. The nest-boxes which are to be seen in country 
poultiy houses are usually placed in rows on shelves, which 
are sometimes in tiers, one above the other. No arrangement 
can be imagined better calculated to ensure the injurious dryness 
of the eggs, and to favour the generation of vermin which 
infest the sitting hens and nests. 
The nests, in accordance with nature, should be on the damp 
ground, so that the eggs may be cooler below than above. A 
bushel of mould, or a thick green turf kept in its place by two 
or three bricks, makes the most efficient and healthy nest. 
They may also be made in boxes, or in old market baskets filled 
with moist earth. These can be covered over with an ordinary 
circular coop, so that the sitting hen is not molested by the 
others. If a hen lays away, stealing a nest in a hedge or under 
a corn stack, or any other obscure situation, the eggs should 
never be touched, if chickens are desired ; as soon as the 
hen has laid her full clutch she will sit, and bring out a far 
stronger and healthier brood than will be produced under any 
more artificial circumstances. The exposure of the eggs to the 
weather does not, as many persons imagine, injure them in the 
slightest degree, for when a hen sits under these circumstances 
she usually hatches every egg. 
If only one place can be devoted to both the hatching and 
laying fowls, it is necessary to divide the former from the latter 
by a piece of wire-work. For, if the laying hens are allowed to 
intrude upon those that are hatching, fighting — tending to a 
great destruction of eggs — ensues. "Where it is practicable, it is 
always exceedingly desirable to sit two or three hens on the 
same day. When they have sat a week the eggs should be 
tested, and those which are not fertile removed. Many instru- 
ments under various names have been devised for this object, 
but none of them are sui^erior to a piece of stifi" cardboard, as the 
cover of a book, having an oval hole cut in it slightly smaller 
than the eggs to be examined. This is readily used with an 
ordinary lamp at night. The eggs should be carefully removed 
from under one of the hens, taken to a dark room and then 
examined. The cardboard is hold upright between the eye and 
the light, and the egg is placed against the hole. If the light 
shines through it and it is clear, having the same appearance as 
a nwv-laid egg, it is not fertile, and it is worse than useless to 
replace it under the hen, as it occupies space and is liable 
to be broken and soil the other eggs. Those eggs that are 
fertile and contain cliickens are perfectly dark and opaque, 
except at the larger end, where the air space is to be seen. 
