mania; and we are credibly informed, "that instances have occurred of a father staking his children or wife, and a son his mother and sisters, on the issue of a battle."

Of the utility of the fowl as an article of food, and of the goodness of its eggs, little need here be said ;-all are aware of the vast numbers of the former consumed in the metropolis alone; and with respect to the latter, thousands are annually imported from France to meet the demands of the market. In all ages, the cock has been celebrated as the har binger of morn, the herald of the sun, whose clarion sounds before the break of day. "Watch ye, therefore," says our Saviour, "for ye know not when the master of the house cometh; at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning."

Though the common fowl is now widely spread, it is not adapted for the high boreal regions. It is not found to breed in the northern parts of Siberia, and in Iceland is kept only as a rarity. The manners of the ordinary fowl are too well known to require comment, -their mode of scratching the earth in quest of insects, their fondness for dusting their plumage, the proud strut of the cock at the

head of his train, his jealousy of a rival, his attention, and the peculiar note with which he calls the hens to partake of some choice morsel which he has discovered or scratched up, have been noticed again and again by all familiar with that interesting spot, a wellarranged farm-yard. After laying her egg, on leaving the nest, the hen utters a loud cackling cry, to which the cock often responds in a high-toned kind of scream. The number of eggs laid by a single hen during the spring and summer months, varies according to cir cumstances as diet, a suitable locality, etc., but she can only cover in sitting from twelve to sixteen. The chick breaks the egg on the twenty-first day; in a few hours it is lively

and active.

It is not only under the natural parent, whose patience, care, and anxiety are proverbial, that the eggs of the fowl are capable of being hatched. Artificial means have been and are successfully used, both in France and in England; and, as is well known, an establishment for hatching eggs has been long maintained in Egypt, from which thousands of fowls are annually distributed. The uniformity of the atmospheric temperature in

Egypt no doubt contributes much to success; but in our variable climate, the Eccaleobion* machine, invented by Mr. Bucknell, has been found to answer most admirably. This machine resembles an oblong box nine feet in length, three in breath, and three in height; it is placed on a table, and is warmed by means of an internal apparatus capable of being so regulated, that any degree of temperature may be maintained, from that of the atmosphere to that of 300 degrees of Fahrenheit. It is capable of containing two thousand eggs. Many thousand chickens have been matured in the egg by this machine; and could it be brought into general use, considerable advantage might result from its employment. Mr. Bucknell, in his "Treatise on Artificial Incubation," makes the following observations :"It must have struck even the most superficial observer, that the extraordinary fecundity of gallinaceous fowls is a wise and most benevolent dispensation of nature, to provide more abundantly food for man; as in those tribes of birds not suited to his table, the female lays no more eggs than she can incubate.†

* Ekkaλew, (eccaleo) to call forth -Bios, (bios) life.

This is not quite correct: the pigeon, the partridge, the

With respect, therefore, to domestic poultry, the (perhaps) most nutritious of all human food, this rich provision of bounteous Providence is for the first time available to Europe." That is, by means of the Eccaleobion. "We call the Egyptians barbarous: the procuring, however, by art and industry, of that necessary of life, good animal food, is no evidence of barbarism. If the population of the united kingdom, which, as respects Egypt, is as twenty-four to two, were as well supplied with this artificial production as Egypt, it would require, not ninety-two millions, but one thousand one hundred and four millions of poultry annually, for them to be as well-fed in this respect as the uncivilized natives of Egypt. But how stands the account on this matter? Full one-third of our population subsist almost entirely, or rather starve, upon potatoes alone; another third have, in addition to this edible, oaten or inferior wheaten bread, with one or two meals of fat pork or the refuse of the shambles, per week; while a considerable

quail, the pheasant, the grouse, etc, lay no more eggs than they can incubate, nor does the fowl in a state of nature; yet these birds are delicacies of the table. That the fowl should be so constituted as to lay, while in a state of domestication, more eggs than she can incubate, is a wise provision.

majority of the remaining third seldom are able to procure an ample daily supply of good butchers' meat, or obtain the luxury of poultry from year to year. On the continent of

Europe, the population is still in a worse condition;-fish, soups made from herbs, a stuff called bread, made from every variety of grain, black and brown, hard and sour, such as no Englishman could eat,-olives, chestnuts, the pulpy saccharine fruits; roots, stalks, and leaves, and not unfrequently the bark of trees;-sawdust, blubber, train-oil, with frogs and snails, make up and constitute a good part of the food of the greater portion of There is no other

the inhabitants of Europe.

cause for this than the excessive ignorance of its population."

We think that Mr. Bucknell draws his picture a little too strong; and we cannot help suspecting that his Eccaleobion would not prove a panacea for the catalogue of evils he enumerates, though one were kept for the wholesale hatching of fowls in every village. In France, M. Réaumur pursued a long and varied series of experiments on the artificial means of hatching the eggs of poultry, the details of which he narrates at full, but which would here