AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
83 
from our limited faculties, are altogether hidden from our 
research. 
Hatching chickens by artificial heat, is a process that 
has been long known in Egypt: (it was successfully tried 
by Mr. Potter, in the isle of Ely, both with hens and phea- 
sants’ eggs,) but this is only now practised by the inhabi- 
tants of a single village called Berne, and by those who 
live in its immediate vicinity. About the beginning of 
autumn, these persons spread themselves all over the coun- 
try, and each of them are ready to undertake the manage- 
ment of an oven. These ovens are of different sizes, capa- 
ble of containing from forty to eighty thousand eggs; and 
the number of ovens in different parts, was about three 
hundred and eighty. These were annually kept working 
for about six months; and as each brood takes up twenty- 
one days in hatching, it is easy in every one of them to 
produce eight different broods of chickens in the year. 
The ovens are of the most simple construction, consist- 
ing of only a low arched apartment of clay. Two rows 
of shelves are formed, and the eggs are placed so as not to 
touch each other. They are slightly moved five or six 
times in every twenty-four hours. All possible care is to 
be taken to diffuse the heat equally throughout; and there 
is but one small aperture large enough to admit a man 
stooping. During the first eight days, the heat is rendered 
great, in the last eight it is gradually diminished, till at 
length, when the young brood is ready to come forth, it 
is reduced almost to the state of the natural atmosphere. 
At the end of the first eight days, it is known which of the 
eggs will not be productive. 
Every person who undertakes the care of an oven is 
under the obligation of delivering to his employer only 
two-thirds of as many chickens as there have been eggs 
given to him, and he is a gainer by this bargain, as it always 
happens (except from some unexpected accident) that more 
than two-thirds of the eggs produce birds. In order 
to make a calculation of the number of chickens thus 
hatched yearly in Egypt, it has been supposed that, upon 
an average of only two-thirds of the eggs being productive, 
and that each brood consists of at least thirty thousand 
chickens, the ovens, by this estimate, give life, annually, 
to about 92,600,000 of these animals. 
M. de Reaumur introduced this advantageous mode of 
hatching eggs into France, and by a number of ingenious 
experiments, reduced the art to certain principles. He 
found that the degree of heat necessary for the production 
of all kinds of domestic fowls was the same, the only dif- 
ference consisting in the time during which it ought to be 
communicated to the eggs; it will bring the canary-bird to 
perfection in eleven or twelve days, while the turkey 
poult requires from twenty-four to twenty-eight. M. de 
Reaumur found that stoves heated by means of pipes from 
a baker’s oven, or the furnace of glass-houses, succeeded 
better than those made hot by layers of dung, the mode pre- 
ferred in Egypt. These should have their heat kept as 
nearly equal as possible, and the eggs should be frequently 
removed from the sides into the middle, in order that each 
may receive an equal portion of heat. After the eggs were 
hatched, he had the offspring put into a kind of low boxes 
without bottoms, and lined with fur, the warmth of which 
supplied that of the hen, and in which the chickens could 
at any time take shelter. Till the chickens acquired some 
strength, these boxes were kept in a warm room; with safety 
they then could be exposed to the open air in a court-yard. 
The young seldom take any food the whole day after being 
hatched; then a few crumbs of bread are given for a day 
or two, after which time they begin to pick up insects and 
grain for themselves. That the trouble of attending them 
might be saved, M. de Reaumur taught capons to watch 
them in the same manner as hens, of which three or four 
were sufficient to take care of two hundred chickens. 
RAPID PROPAGATION OF DOMESTIC QUAD- 
RUPEDS. 
Next to the direct agency of man, his indirect influ- 
ence in multiplying the numbers of large herbivorous quad- 
rupeds of domesticated races, may be regarded as one of the 
most obvious causes of the extermination of species. On 
this, and on several other grounds, the introduction of the 
horse, ox, and other mammalia, into America, and their 
rapid propagation over the continent within the last three 
centuries, is a fact of great importance in natural history. 
The extraordinary herds of wild cattle and horses which 
overrun the plains of South America, sprung from a very 
few pairs first carried over by the Spaniards; and they 
prove that the wide geographical range of large species in 
great continents, does not necessarily imply that they have 
existed there from remote periods. Humboldt observes, 
in his Travels, on the authority of Azzara, that it is be- 
lieved there exist, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, twelve 
million cows and three million horses, without comprising 
in this enumeration, the cattle that have no acknowledged 
proprietor. In the Llanos of Caraccas, the rich hateros, or 
proprietors of pastoral farms, are entirely ignorant of the 
number of cattle they possess. The young are branded 
with a mark peculiar to each herd, and some of the most 
wealthy owners mark as many as fourteen thousand a year. 
