40 
THE ART OF REARING 
Should the rooms have brick floors, the cloth 
may be spread on the bricks, and changed every 
five hours. Bricks dry the eggs by absorbing 
the moisture more quickly, than any other sub 
stance. 
If the flooring is not of brick, hurdles of wicker- 
work would be necessary, or basket-work tables. 
In the course of two days the eggs will generally 
be dry ; they should then be put in plates in 
layers of 7 or 8 tines, and left until it is needful 
to hatch them, being careful to preserve them 
from rats. It is essential to place them in a cool 
dry spot, in about from 46° to 59° Fahrenheit. 
All these operations above-mentioned, until the 
time when the eggs are laid to dry, employ one 
hour for thirty ounces of eggs. And this is the 
distribution of this hour. The cloths in w’hich 
the eggs are wrapped are to soak six minutes in 
the pail, the water of which should be quite fresh; 
the cloths drip five minutes ; five-and-twenty mi- 
nutes may be employed in scraping the eggs off 
thoroughly, and putting them in the basin; five 
minutes should be passed in washing them, and 
separating the light eggs ; five minutes allowed to 
let the water run off through the sieve; four mi- 
nutes for washing them in wine; five minutes to 
let that run off and drop off, and five minutes to 
spread the eggs most carefully upon the linen 
prepared for drying them. 
