EGYPTIAN OVENS.

chamber, according to Lane, is about nine or ten feet long, eight feet wide, and five or six feet high, and has above it a vaulted oven, of the same size, or rather less in height. The chamber communicates with the passage by an aperture large enough for a man to enter; and with its oven by a similar aperture. The ovens, also, of the same row, communicate with each other, and each has an aperture for the escape of smoke.

The eggs are placed on mats or straw, one tier above another, usually to the number of three, in the small chambers, and fuel is placed on the floor of the ovens above. The entrance of the máamal is well closed. There are two or three small chambers before it, for the attendant, the fuel, and the chickens newly hatched. Each máamal contains generally from twelve to twentyfour chambers for eggs; and receives about a hundred and fifty thousand eggs during the annual period of its continuing open. One quarter or a third of this number usually fail. The peasants of the neighbourhood supply the eggs; the attendant of the máamal examines them, and afterwards commonly gives one chicken for every two eggs that he has received. The operation is performed only during two or three months in the year, in the spring; and earliest in the most southern parts of the country.

REAUMUR'S EXPERIMENTS.

The manager, accustomed to the art from his youth, knows the exact temperature required for success, without any such instrument as our thermometer. On the twentieth day, some of the eggs first put in are hatched ; but most on the twenty-first day, that is, after the period required in ordinary circumstances. The weaker of the chickens are placed in the passage, the rest in other apartments, where they remain a day or two, before they are given to the persons to whom they are due. According to an Egyptian newspaper, published on the 1st of March, 1831, of our era, there were actually hatched in this way more than seventeen millions of fowls' eggs.

Reaumur, after various experiments, tried to take advantage of the heat of the bread ovens of a nunnery in France. Having ascertained the heat of a room, situated over the bake-house, and provided for its being supplied uniformly, he arranged the eggs on the shelves of a small cupboard, placed in this chamber, and committed the care of them to the inmates of the institution. A single box containing a hundred eggs, was entrusted to one of them, who was very ingenious; and, though half proved useless, twenty were hatched one day sooner than they would have been by a hen. It was thus supposed, that by rooms over the ovens in use,

THE ECCALEOBION.

chickens might be multiplied at a great rate; but the plan has ended in a few experiments.

In this country similar efforts have been made, by of fire and steam. A remarkable and suc

the agency cessful one appears in the use of a machine, which was exhibited some years ago in Pall Mall. To it has been given the singular name of the Eccaleobion, meaning, "I bring," or "call forth life." It appears to be an oblong, square, wooden box, about nine feet long, three broad, and three and a half high, and covered, excepting the doors, with cloth. As the doors are glazed, its eight divisions in which the eggs are spread promiscuously without any covering, may be seen the power in operation is within; and the whole stands on a table, and has no connexion with the walls against which it is placed. The Eccaleobion nicely adapts the heat required to the stage of the egg. The temperature suited to a thousand eggs during the last week of incubation, would not call forth life in a thousand fresh eggs; while the temperature necessary in the former case would be fatal in the latter. The heat actually required is therefore secured; and so long as eggs can be obtained plentifully and good, the average of birds hatched by the machine is said to exceed one hundred daily, or about forty thousand per annum.

CHAPTER II.

THE PELICAN'S NEST-CHANGES WHICH TAKE PLACE DURING IN

CUBATION

PROVISION MADE FOR THE BIRDS FIRST

-PARENTAL CARE.

HATCHED

It will now be desirable to consider particularly the hatching of eggs by the parent bird. Our poet Montgomery has said, in reference to the pelicans he has so beautifully described :

The noble birds, with skill spontaneous, framed
A nest of reeds among the giant grass,
That waved in lights and shadows o'er the soil.
There, in sweet thraldom, yet unweening why,
The patient dam, who ne'er till now had known
Parental instinct, brooded o'er her eggs,
Long ere she found the curious secret out,
That life was hatching in their brittle shells-
Then, from a wild rapacious bird of prey,
Tamed by the kindly process, she became

That gentlest of all living things-a mother.

Various indeed are the situations in which hen-birds

pass through this remarkable process. The engraving

THE WOOD WARBLER.

shows the wood warbler in her ground nest; while others may be discovered in very different circumstances.

Our chief knowledge of incubation arises, however, from the attention that has been given to the domestic hen ; and this therefore we proceed to notice. In a few hours after the hen has been brooding over her eggs, a con