Chickens Hatched by Men.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1812, 16 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Chickens Hatched by Men.

The author of " La Chasse Pratique " mentions the I eat performed by one of his cousins who, night and day, for a dozen days kept five quail eggs at a proper temperature, and brought out five healthy young ones. Examples of personal incubation by amateurs might be multiplied, without citing the wioked Dey of Algiers who, when his pirates brought him Christian captives, set them as taskwork to hatch hens' eggs. A Eheims Monsieur C, a passionate lover of birds, continued for several days the incubation of a sitting of silver pheasants' eggs (which an idle good-for-nothing hen had shamefully abandoned) with perfect success. Monsieur Leroy relates that one of his friends, a middle-aged man and a frantic fowl fancier, found one summer morning a sitting hen, to whom he was carrying her breakfast, dead on the nest. Three chickens had just burst the shell; seven eggs remained to be safely brought to the hatching point. An immediate decision had to be taken. " I will do it myself," he said. After introducing the three chicks to a nursing hen, who fortunately did not refuse to adopt them, he put the eggs into a perforated cardboard box lined with cotton-wool, drew on his nightcep, and jumped into bed, placed the box where it would get most of his natural warmth, and drew the eider-down coverlid over all. In this situation he remained twenty-four hours, without being able to close an eyelid. The chirpings of the

chickens in their shells and his attempts to answer them, and to play the part of a sittiug nen, kept him incessantly on the alert. It >vas heavy work, but received its recompense •n seven lively chickens. — London Society.