Artificial Incubation. 95 
fully bears out the statements of Professor Simpson. The facility 
with which the chloroform may be used, must be looked upon as 
a great recommendation; as in many instances persons are deter- 
red from taking ether on account of the formidable appearance of 
the inhaling apparatus — whilst the trouble of administering has 
made medical men willing to dispense with it. 
Chloroform, chloroformyle, or the perchloride of Formyle, may 
be made and obtained artificially by various processes — as by 
making milk of lime, or an aqueous solution of caustic alkali act 
upon chloral; by distilling alcohol, pyroxylic spirit, or acetone, 
with chloride of lime; by leading a stream of chlorine gas into 
a solution of caustic potass in spirit of wine. The preparation 
employed by Dr. Simpson was made according to the following 
formula of Dumas: 
Chloride of lime in powder, - - lbs. 4 
Water, lbs. 12 
Rectified spirit, - - - - - f. oz. 12 
" Mix in a capacious retort or still, and distill as long as a dense 
liquid, which sucks in the water with which it comes orer, is 
produced." — Atheneum, London. 
ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION.— NEW APPLICATION OF INDIA 
RUBBER. 
Hatching poultry eggs by artificial means is again revived in 
the metropolis, and a new mode of accomplishing this object is 
now upon view at the Cosmorama rooms, in Regent street. The 
principle of the Eccaleobian, which created a sensation a few 
years ago, was simply that of an oven, wherein the eggs were 
baked into life, but it seems with so large a per centage of failure, 
and subsequent vital feebleness, that the apparatus produced but 
small available results. The present contrivance is based upon 
the more natural plan of what the patentee calls " top-contact 
heat," whereby the soft yielding breast of the parent hen is imi- 
tated by longitudinal India rubber bags, filled with water heated 
to the proper degree. The eggs are laid in trays and submitted 
to the influence of this artificial " mother," and, we find, with 
singular success, the average loss being scarcely twenty-five in 
the hundred. This mode is the invention of a Mr. Cantel, who 
has, both in America and in this country, given birth to innumer- 
able batches of chickens, in every respect well-formed, healthy, 
and marketable. He calculates that a single incubator will pro- 
duce seventeen hatches a year, and that its operations may be 
extended to either turkeys, geese, or peacocks, in fact to every 
species of barn-door fowl. — Mark Lane Express. 
