A NEW CHICKEN-HATCHING MACHINE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3097, 1 June 1881, Page 4

A NEW CHICKEN-HATCHING MACHINE.

The latest outcome of Yankee ingenuity is the Henophon, which is a chicken-hatch-ing machine of a marvellous kind, if we mi.7 believe tbe descriptions published in our American contemporaries. Chickens have for a long time been hatched by steam. but this latest invention, which is said to be th.". work of an Illinois farmer is described as an "arrangement in electricity," by means of which any experienced and trust worthy hen may be enabled to hatch an krleGmte number of broods at one and tho sa>ne time without incurring any abnormnl w..-.«te of vital force. Her nest, occupying a central position in the poultry breeding establishment, is electrically connected with all other nests duly furnished with eggs, and, by simply sitting on her own complement in the good old-fashioned way she ha dies the lot. There would appear to be but one objection to this mechanism. It is too powerful. Not only does it hatch all the chicks latent in the real egg, but it act? with such vigour upon the china imitations placed in the central nest as delusive stimulants to incubation, that every now and then one of these " counterfeit present ments " is found to produce a shiny, stiffjointed chicken with glazed eyes, set in a fixed stare, and a flesh texture rendering it altogether uneatable We are afraid the " arrangement in electricity " exists only in the fertile imagination of some ingenious but not too particular paragraphist.