to the time of the hatching of the chickens, the creature having taken an affection for the eggs, which she was fond of having under her, for some reason not easily assigned, though assuredly not with the desire of hatching chickens *."

Pliny seems to infer that the story of the Empress Livia gave origin to "the device of late, to lay eggs in some warme place and to make a gentle fire underneath of small straw or light chaffe, to give a kind of moderate heate; but evermore the eggs must be turned by man or woman's hand both night and day, and so at the set time they look for chickens and had themt." But though such experiments may have been then revived, they were assuredly not new, for they are mentioned by Aristotle and Diodorus, though in a rather vague manner. Aristotle says that eggs may be warmed and chickens hatched in the earth, probably deducing such an inference from the circumstance of the eggs of crocodiles and other reptiles being thus hatched. In the same way he appears to have been thinking of the eggs of snakes which are hatched in dung-hills, when he tells us that in Egypt they cover eggs with dung in order to hatch chickens,-a circumstance quite impossible, as we shall presently see. Diodorus is more particular in detailing the process, which consisted, he says, in filling a vessel with the dung of fowls passed through a sieve, over which were laid feathers, and upon these the eggs, with their smallest ends upward; the eggs were then covered with a similar layer of feathers and dung‡. Cardan, in commenting on this passage, says, the dung both below and above ought to be put into pillows §.

M. Réaumur, however, assures us that all this must be pure fancy; for after a whole year's varied * L'Art de faire Eclorre, chap. i. + Holland's Plinie, x. 55. ‡ Aldrovandi Ornithologia, ii.

De Subtilitate.

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experiments, repeated incessantly, and with such assiduity as almost to tire out his patience, he was unsuccessful in hatching a single chicken by means of dung, though he at length succeeded in doing so by a different method. Success, as Thevenot informs us, also attended an experiment made in Tuscany, but it was under Egyptian direction; for the grand duke, in order to indulge the laudable curiosity long characteristic of the house of Medici, sent to Egypt for a person skilled in the management of the

process.

Modern travellers, who mention the art as practised in Egypt, are very deficient in their details; but we ought to wonder the less at this when Father Sicard informs us that it is kept a secret even in Egypt, and is only known to the inhabitants of the village of Berme, and a few adjoining places in the Delta, who leave it as an heir-loom to their children, forbidding them to impart it to strangers. When the beginning of autumn, the season most favourable for hatching, approaches, the people of this village disperse themselves over the country, each taking the management of a number of eggs entrusted to his care by those unacquainted with the art. The subsequent operations consist, first, in the building of suitable ovens ; and, secondly, in causing the eggs placed there to be subjected to a regular heat. The mystery does not, however, lie in the construction of the oven, for the outside is not only open to all, but strangers are even allowed to witness the curious process going on in the interior. The grand secret is the manner of causing the eggs to be warmed that the chickens may be gradually developed, and at last hatched. The most essential condition of this process consists in keeping the eggs at the proper degree of temperature, and consequently in knowing how to manage the fire that heats the oven,

According to the best descriptions of the Egyptian mamal, or hatching-oven, it is a brick structure about nine feet high. The middle is formed into a gallery about three feet wide and eight feet high, extending from one end of the building to the other. This gallery forms the entrance to the oven, and commands its whole extent, facilitating the various operations indispensable for keeping the eggs at the proper degree of warmth. On each side of this gallery there is a double row of rooms, every room on the ground-floor having one over it of precisely the same dimensions, namely, three feet in height, four or five in breadth, and twelve or fifteen in length. These have a round hole for an entrance of about a foot and a half in diameter, wide enough for a man to creep through; and into each are put four or five thousand eggs. The number of rooms in one mamal varies from three to twelve; and the building is adapted, of course, for hatching from forty to eighty thousand eggs, which are not laid on the bare brick floor of the oven, but upon a mat, or bed of flax, or other non-conducting material.

In each of the upper rooms is a fire-place for warming the lower room, the heat being communicated through a large hole in the centre. The fire-place is a sort of gutter, two inches deep and six wide, on the edge of the floor, sometimes all round, but for the most part only on two of its sides. As wood or charcoal would make too quick a fire, they

burn the dung of cows or camels, mixed with straw, formed into cakes and dried. The doors which open into the gallery serve for chimneys to let out the smoke, which finally escapes through openings in the arch of the gallery itself. The fire in the gutters is only kept up, according to some, for an hour in the morning and an hour at night, which they call the dinner and supper of the chickens; while others say it is lighted four times a-day. The difference probably depends on the temperature of the weather. When the smoke of the fires has subsided, the openings into the gallery from the several rooms are carefully stuffed with bundles of coarse tow, by which the heat is more effectually confined than it could be by a wooden door.

Transverse section and elevation of an Egyptian Egg-oven.

When the fires have been continued for an indefinite number of days, eight, ten, or twelve, according to the weather, they are discontinued, the heat acquired by the ovens being then sufficient to finish the hatching, which requires in all twenty-one days, the same time as when eggs are naturally hatched by a hen. About the middle of this period a number of the eggs in the lower are moved into the upper rooms, in order to give the embryos greater facility in making their exit from the shell, than they would have if a number of eggs were piled up above them.