November 17. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
115 
of promise is to be a land watered with the bounteous 
rains of heaven, and not ai-tificially irrigated; not 
watered with the foot, like Egypt. The house in which 
one has been sick is to be washed seven times, with free 
use of aromatic herbs. Fires are also to be used for 
purification. 
Then, as to the clothes of the sick. Articles defiled 
by the prespiration of the whole skin only are to be 
washed; but if polluted by the ichorous discharge from 
a broken, diseased surface, they are to be burnt. We 
all know that clothes laid by will sometimes mould and 
decay; and the tendency of a certain condition of the 
air to accelerate these and similar daugers has been 
adverted to in a former paper. 
At the present time, in districts affected with cholera, 
some people have taken note of the mouldiness which 
comes over joints of meat hung up in the air, thinking, 
by the character of this putrefaction, and its progress 
from day to day, to judge of the persistency or dimi¬ 
nution of the choleraic taint in the air, as by a sort of 
cholerimeter. 
On some such principles we should be inclined to 
account for the laws as to the leprosy in houses (and 
something of the same nature was observed during the 
plague in London). It is remarked, that, in later times, 
the Rabbis believed “ that this sore disease was in¬ 
flicted, first, on the houses and garments, as a punish¬ 
ment for lesser sins; and if men continued in a course 
of wickedness, then it invaded their bodies; so that it 
begun in their houses which were not infected by the in¬ 
habitants, but the inhabitants by them.'’ (Lewis.) The 
general immunity of the Jews from cholera is very 
singular; though under oppressive or intolerant govern¬ 
ment they have suffered, no doubt. 
With the following quotations from the author of 
“ The Analogy,” we would, for the present, conclude our 
remarks on a subject upon which a vast deal more 
might be said:— 
“ The Law of Moses, then, and the Gospel, are autho¬ 
ritative publications of the religion of nature; they 
afford a proof of God’s general providence as moral 
Governor of the world, as well as his particular dispen¬ 
sations towards sinful creatures as revealed in the Law 
and the Gospel.” “ But it is one of the peculiar weak¬ 
nesses of human nature, when upon a comparison of 
two things one is found to be of greater importance 
than the other, to consider this other of scarce any im¬ 
portance at all.” J. J. 
At a recent meeting of the British Association at Hull, 
a paper was read by Dr. Horner, before the Zoological 
section, in reference to some discoveries concerning the 
chicken in the egg, and its liberation from the shell. 
The subject is one that will interest many of our 
readers, and we have, therefore, endeavoured to arrange 
a brief abstract of the facts on which his contradiction 
has been giveu to the common opiuioD of the tapping 
noise that immediately precedes the exit of the chicken 
from its shell being caused by the action of the beak on 
the latter substance. 
Dr. Horner commenced by observing, that the chicken 
in the egg had often formed a deeply interesting subject 
of investigation to the physiologist, as well as to the 
naturalist, both of this and other countries, inasmuch 
as, from the facility of observation, it so admirably illus¬ 
trated the order of development and growth of the 
different organs and parts of the body. After alluding 
to the various phenomena of incubation, he stated, that 
the special object of his communication was to an¬ 
nounce the discovery of the nature of the sound which 
is heard within the egg during the last two days of 
incubation, and to show what is the exact mode by 
which the chick breaks the shell. 
Now, the opinion so universally held, not only by 
amateurs and breeders of poultry, but also by natu¬ 
ralists and physiologists, that the tapping, or, more 
truly, the crackling, sounds, heard within the egg on 
the 20th and 21st days of incubation, were caused by 
the efforts of the chick to break the shell, he proved to 
be erroneous by the following experiments. First, by 
breaking a hole in the large end of the egg, when the 
bill of the chicken was seen to be quite stationary, and 
never coming in contact with the shell, though the 
sounds referred to continued as before. Secondly, by 
observing that the sounds were heard in other instances, 
before the bill had emerged from the folds of the mem¬ 
brane which envelopes the chicken, and, consequently, 
it could not then be employed to break the shell. And 
thirdly, by enlarging the aperture in the shell first made 
by the chicken, so as to isolate the bill, and prevent the 
possibility of its coming in contact with the shell, when 
the same sounds still continued to be heard as before— 
thus proving that the sounds heard within the egg were 
not, and could not be, produced by the bill of the 
chicken breaking the shell. 
On examining a recently-hatched chicken, by placing 
tbe ear, and also the stethescope, on its hreast and 
sides, a precisely similar sound was identified as had 
been heard within the egg. Thus, as Dr. Horner ob¬ 
served, “my enquiry was complete—viz., that the sound 
heard within the egg during the last two days of in¬ 
cubation is not caused by the tapping, or by any other 
mode of contact of the chicken’s bill with the shell; 
but that it is truly respiratory, and produced by the 
transmission of air through the lungs ; in other words, 
that it is nothing more than the natural respiratory 
sound of the chicken.” Such an explanation receives, 
also, collateral testimony from the discovery of physio¬ 
logists, that air first enters the lungs of the chicken 
about the end of the 19th day from the commencement 
of incubation—viz., at the very period at which this 
sound, truly respiratory, first begins to be heard. In 
further proof of his assertion, Dr. Horner also ascer¬ 
tained that the frequency of the respiratory act exactly 
accorded with tbe repetition of the sound within the 
egg. The action of the heart of a newly-hatched 
chicken, he noticed, was so rapid that it could not be 
