THE TROPICAL AGRlCUl/IT R I S t 
[May 1R95 
of the year, from May to November, there is a 
fresh south-east breeze; during the remaindei of 
the year the wind is northerly, and most rain falls 
during that period, not as regular monsoon rains, 
but as frequent thunderstorms. In the daytime the 
temperature is generally from ISO deg. to S."> deg. 
Fahrenheit in the shade, and falls, say, five or six 
degrees during the night, but considerably more near 
the great mountain ranges. The possession la not 
visited by hurricanes — a matter ot extreme import- 
ance to the planter. The coming prosperity of 
New Guinea, according to Sir William Macgregor, 
will most probably rest on its expoits of sugar, tea,, 
tobacco, cotton, rice, sago, gutta perch*, copra, and 
the numerous smaller industries, agricultural and com- 
mercial, and he thinks that in all probability the 
day will come when British New Guinea will be ue- 
garded as one of the healthiest of the tropical 
colonics of the empire.—//, it' V. Mull, March B. 
IN' 1)1 AX PATENTS. 
Calcutta, the 7th Mirch, 1895. 
Applications in respect of the undermentioned in- 
ventions have been filed, during the week ending "2nd 
March 1835, under the provisions of Act V of 18.S8, 
in the Office of the Secretary appointed under tin- 
Inventions and Designs Act, 18S8: — 
An IsrpobVED Method for Cooling IV: a Lkak win 
the Process or Rolling. — No. (12 of 1895. — George 
Murray Gollom, Engineer and Tea Planter, care 1.. 
w! G. Forbes, Ksq., Her Majesty's Mint, Calcutta, 
for an improved method for cooling the tea leaf 
during the process of lolling in the tea rollers. 
Ax Improved Method ix the Construction ok 
Roofs of Buildings. —No. OG of 1895. — John Alfred 
Du Casse, of the Bungala Gor Tea Estate, Man- 
galdai, Assam, Tea Planter, for an improved method 
in the construction of roofs of buildings, so as to 
give free admission to the external air and thereby 
lower the temperature. 
Improvements in Apparatus for Registering 
Duty of Rain Gauges. — No. 07 of 18'J.j. — Alexandei 
Frederick Ferguson, Surgeon-Major, Indian Medical 
Service, now stationed at Mhow, for improvements 
in apparatus for registering the duty of Rain Gauges. 
Specifications of the undermentioned inventions 
have been filed under the provisions of Act V 
of 1888:— 
Improvemen rs in Apparatus for Drying Leaves 
of the Tea Feast.— No. o02 of 18.(1.— Alfred Horatio 
Bell Sharpe, of ;!2, Ch arlesworth Terrace, Foss Bank 
Lincoln, in the County of Linco.n, Eugland, En- 
gineer, for improvements in machinery or apparatus 
lor drying leaves of the tea plant, the same being 
applicable for drying other analogous substances, 
(riled 23rd February 1895.) — Hull >h UnQineer. 
ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION IN EGYPT. 
Artificial incubation, says the "United States Consul- 
General at Cairo, is by no means a strictly modern 
industry in Egypt. The art of hatching eggs by other 
than natural process was known and practised by 
ancient Egyptians, and the Egyptian incubatory of 
today is but a reproduction of the one of thousands 
of years ago. The method of hatching eggs by arti- 
ficial means, and a knowledge of constructing ap- 
pliances for the same, have descended through ages 
from father to son. Tne incubatory is constructed 
of sun-dried bricks, mortar, and earth; and one which 
was inspected by Consul C.irdwell was a structure 70 
feet long. 6u feet wide, and IB feet high. It is pro- 
vided with twelve compartments, or incubators 
each capable of holding 7,500 eggs, making a totil 
capacity of 90,000 eggs undergoing incubation at one 
time. The season last only three months out of 
the twelve, beginning with March and ending with 
May ; therefore allowing three weeks for incubating 
eggs, and one week for removing each hatch and 
preparation for again filling the incubators with eggs, 
the number under treatment at this incubatory in 
one season may be placed at 270,000. From these 
are hatched 2;!i,0.W chickens. The per-centage of 
hatch would be much greater, but the eggs, being 
necessarily procured in large quantities and from 
distant places are largely dam ige I. Experience 
makes the attendants of in-ubalors great experts, 
and in a very few days after the eggs are place! in 
the ovens the traine I hand quickly detects the uu- 
vitalized egg, and the litter are at once placed upon 
the market at low prices for culinary consumption. 
Eggs arc bought for the incubatory at a price n.-ver 
exceeding twopence half-penny a dozen and chickens 
just from the shell are sold at less than sevetipencc 
ha'.f-peuny a dozen. After the ineubato s be»in to 
turn out their product people eonx- from all the sur- 
rounding districts, buying up the hatch and dis- 
posing of eggs in exchage for chickens. The oven 
crop of marketable chickens is estimated at HJ3BQftft> 
in one season, and estimating that one-fourth only 
of this amount die during their growing period, it 
may be st ited that 20,000,000 is the hatch ..I the 
ovens. In the incubatory examined hy Consul Card- 
well, one man and a boy are the sole attendant-. 
They live in the ovens night and day during the 
entire period of three months devoted to incubation, 
and the temperature 8nrround ; ng the n is never less 
than 98 deg. Fahrenheit. The man and boy k>;ep up 
the smouldering fires that create this t-moerature. 
they place the eggs in the ovens, move the great 
masses of eggs four or five times (luring twenty- 
four hours, look after the chickens, deliver them to 
buyers, and keep the incubatory in perfect order. 
As stated above, the incubatory is constructed of 
sun-dried bricks, mortar, and earth. The bricks and 
mortar are nsed in constructing the inner and outer 
walls, and earth is used to fill up the space between 
them. At the corner there is a door on one side, 
a window at the other, with close wooden shutters 
for both. There are five rooms, the first being a 
kind of reception-room, provided with a raised mud 
divan covered with rush mats. Here the buving and 
selling goon, wdiile the mysteries of the incubators 
are neither seen nor understood by the crowds .vho 
come to sell eggs or to buy chickens. A passage 
leads from this room past others, into which door- 
ways open to another corresponding to it. except that 
the latter has no openings leading to the outside. 
In one of these 10 31ns is stored refuse, finely 
ground straw, used for creating the fires in the 
ovens. All the walls rise to the same height, namely, 
li) feet, and throughout the structure they are 2 feet 
thick. The spaces between the brick v alls are filled 
with dirt, rising as high as the walls. Passing 
through what is little more than a man-hole, oyer 
which closes a wooden shutter, the passage leading 
between the ovens is reached. This is 50 feet lona. 
with walls rising perpendicularly on each side to the 
roof. The ovens are square rooms, 12 feeteach way. and 
-ire surrounded by brick walls, which begin to nar- 
row when about 8 feet high, gradually drawing to- 
gether until they form heat escapes, or chimneys 
only 10 inches in diameter at their apexes, 1 foot 
above the roof. In the floor of each oven, close to 
the walls, and extending all round, is a groove 
moulded in the mortar. It is about 8 inches wide and 
4. or 5 inches deep, and in this grorwe the finely-guonn i 
straw is burned, and maintains the temperature neces- 
sary for incubation. When once heated, the incu- 
batory is made to maintain the requisite temperature 
with but little more expense of labour and fuel. To 
prepare an incubatory for the season of incubation, 
fires are kept burning in the fire grooves of the 
ovens for eight or ten days, expelling all moisture and 
heating the entire structure before eggs are placed in 
them. In this time the whole of the walls and floors 
become heated, and, after this first heating, a little 
fire every day in one or m ^re of the ovens keeps 
temperature at the incubating degree. The heating 
of the incubatory begins generally after the middle 
of February, and with March the work of incubation 
is in full swing. When the ovens ate ready for incu- 
bation, the mortar floors are covered with finely 
ground staw, to the depth of two inches, and upon 
this are deposited the eggs. A passage way is pre- 
served, from man-holes leading from the passage into 
the ovens to the man-holes connecting the lower and 
upper ones, and the eggs are not brought into 
dangerous contact with the fire grooves round theni, 
