geese, ducks, pigeons—which come within the
designation poultry; and each has its long list
of fancy names. And then the breeder or
fancier can tell you something about the
maladies that poultry-flesh is heir to: such as
baldness, white comb, cramp, apoplexy, hard
crop, bumble feet, leg weakness, roup, gapes, pip,
and other unpleasant ailments; or if he does
not understand these things, so much the worse
for him—his property will fall off, and he will
not know the reason why. Some of the amateur
poultry-houses are fine affairs; such as the
royal poultry-house at Windsor, with its walks
and paths for the fowls, its elegant comfort all
around, and its looking-glasses for the pigeons
to view themselves in.

It must come to a matter of statistics in the
long run, to determine whether poultry-keeping
on an extensive scale will be a permanently
profitable adventure, and whether cottagers can
share with general farmers in this profit. Like
as in a railway company, there is a capital
account and there is a revenue account, and both
must be studied before you can know how you
are getting on. You construct your poultry–house
and yard, and buy fowls to stock it: this
is your invested capital. You buy daily food for
the fowls: this is your current outlay. You
sell eggs and chickens, or perhaps grown-up
fowls: these are your current receipts;
finally, out of the last two items (or rather
out of all three items) you calculate your net
profit.

The journals which devote a portion of their
pages to this kind of lore, give numerous
examples, tending to show whether poultry–keeping
is profitable, and to what extent;
whether some breeds are more profitable than
others; whether each hen should be
encouraged to sit upon her own eggs, or
whether some hens are better fitted for sitters
and others for layers. A mysterious instinct is
this, of brooding or sitting upon several eggs
until the chicks within become vitalised. The
patient hen sits upon the eggs for three weeks
or so, never leaving them for more than about
half an hour a day. Her soft body keeps them
warm, for they are all tucked in under her, as
snugly as Thumb and his seven brothers were
tucked into the big bed. She does it because
she likes it, and that's all we know about it.
The eggs may not be hers; they may be of
another family, belonging to the hen living next
door, or over the way, or round the corner.
The hens are warm blankets, eider-down
quilts, for the time being. The temperature
of their bodies, as they sit covering and hiding
the eggs, is just that which is best suited
for developing the chicks; and when each
chick is strong enough to break through its white
prison-house and strut forth into the world,
the work of the sitter is done. The period of
sitting, about three weeks for fowls, is four
weeks for ducks and turkeys, and a little more
for geese. Sometimes, hens will voluntarily sit
upon eggs which are not their own; at other
times they need to be solicited or coaxed to
this duty. A capon (generally known to us as
a plump addition to the good things of the
table) can sometimes be induced to sit upon
eggs; his services in this way are as useful as
those of a hen, if his body be as warm and his
patience as great. Reaumur mentions a French
lady who regularly employed capons to brood
over the eggs; the hens laid more eggs when
relieved from this duty; and a capon can sit upon
more eggs at one time than a hen, being larger
and fatter.

One kind of experiment, patiently waiting to
know its fate, is that of artificial hatching,
developing the chicks without any brooding
whatever. Continuous warmth for three weeks
being almost the only necessary condition, men
have asked whether this warmth cannot be
supplied in some other way, and at a less
expense. The heat of bakehouses has sometimes
been employed; but what with the attention
needed by the bread, and that needed by the
eggs, the result in most cases has been—a
muddle. The Egyptians are credited with a
system of incubation on a large and
complete scale. Certain persons undertake this
work for all the poultry-rearers in a particular
district. They build brick ovens, called mamals,
each comprising passages, chambers, fireplaces,
flues, and man-holes. A temperature, never
varying far from one hundred degrees Fahrenheit,
is constantly maintained, by burning fuel
made of cakes of dried cow-dung mixed with
straw. The eggs are laid upon flax or mats in
the warm chambers. Half a million eggs can
be hatched in one mamal in a year. The
mamal-keeper has board and lodging, a certain
amount of money wages, and all above a specified
number of chicks that he can hatch out of
a given number of eggs:—an arrangement that
holds out to him an inducement to do his best.
M. Dabry, French consul at Hankow, has
lately published in the Bulletin de la Société
d'Acclimatation, an interesting account of the
system of artificial incubation practised by the
Chinese; by a careful arrangement of fuel,
earthenware dishes, and thick cotton quilts, in
close mud-huts called pao-jang, they liberate
about seven hundred chicks from a thousand
eggs. Whether the artificial mother system,
as it has been called, will succeed in the humid
and variable climate of England, has long been,
and still is, a disputed question. In whatever
way constructed, these mothers are virtually
trays on which eggs can be kept warm till
the chicks are developed. Some years ago,
Mr. Bucknell invited all the world to come
and see his Eccaleobion, or "Invoker of life."
It was an oblong box, nine feet long, three
feet wide, and about the same in height; he
had the means of maintaining an equable
temperature within it, and of providing shelf-room
for two thousand eggs at once. Yet the
Eccaleobion went, we know not whither. And
then there was Mr. Cantelo's hydro-incubator,
exhibited in his model poultry-farm at Chiswick.
A covering of waterproof cloth was laid
upon the eggs; warm water was kept constantly